


The Alchemist and the Shadow

by WriteInTheHeart



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: A Weird Mishmash Of The Movie The Books And Headcanon, AFAB reader - Freeform, Angst, Brought To You By Quarantine 2020, Cunnilingus, Emotional Baggage, Frottage, Groping, Masturbation, Oops! It's Therapy, Oral Sex, Other, Pitch Has Amnesia, Pitch Redemption, Power Dynamics, Reader-Insert, Self-Indulgent, Self-Loathing, Slow Burn, Swearing, Will Eventually Have Teh Sexytimes, You Gotta Fall Before You Can Rise Again, gets a bit kingdom heartsy at the end of act 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:21:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 108
Words: 366,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23966059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteInTheHeart/pseuds/WriteInTheHeart
Summary: In the three-quarters of a century since you died, you've slowly been learning about this new world that lies barely concealed on top of your old one. Mysterious phenomena and magic seep through every pore, and you're eager to study it all to get a better understanding of what really makes Earth tick.One fateful night, under the watch of the new moon, a new spirit crosses Pitch Black's vengeful path.So begins a tale of regrets, redemption, reconciliation, and reparations. Of two lonely creatures meeting, only to realize they're the mirror images of one another. Of them believing that the other is capable of righting themself, thus propping each other up to higher heights than either could imagine attaining on their own. Of understanding what wrongs they have wrought upon humanity and trying not to fall back into old habits. Of accepting one's past in order to move towards a better future.*************Updates MWF. Spicy Chapters: 8, 12, 13, 16, 25, 37, 56, 62, 71, 82, 90, 105
Relationships: Pitch Black/Reader
Comments: 146
Kudos: 166





	1. Seventy-Five Years After Death

The golden auroras stand out wonderfully against the dark, moonless sky, though their true brilliance is diminished in the constant light of the city. They drift through the streets and sift through the windows of houses. The whole show is beautiful, save for the absolute silence accompanying it. The ambient hums and clicks of city streets always seem to muffle when the low, snaking, golden swirls sweep through.

You scan the flow as it passes. From your vantage point on an apartment building, you see the streams fork and split, creating tendrils and deltas wherever they enter multiple windows. Stabbing an arrow into the rubber-coated brick roof and tying hand-woven rope to it, you rappel down to where a whole mess of the golden stuff gathers.

Ever since you became a ghost, the world has been filled with more phenomena than you ever thought possible. In your life, you’d denied belief in the supernatural, especially ghosts, all while constantly binging ghost and cryptid hunting shows. To anyone who asked, it was because you loved seeing people work themselves into tizzies over what was probably a carbon monoxide leak or someone in an ape suit. But once your afterlife had begun… you had to admit you were pleased that you had wasted your time studying this way.

If there’s one thing you’re disappointed and confused by, however, it’s the fact that all the phenomena you’ve seen thus far looks more like this golden stuff than like you. You look like you did in life: humanoid, four limbs, two hands and feet, a face, all the basics…. But in the few decades of this new life, you’ve seen the golden streams, misplaced exotic flora instantly blooming and wilting, what you believe are the source of will-o-the-wisp myths, abstract disembodied noises, uncannily solid rainbows, and so much more. But not one single entity you’d describe as a “person.”

You shrug off the thought and continue to your work. Months of study and preparation are going into tonight, and you refuse to put it off again.

*************

"Oh, how different large fear and small fear is," Pitch laments.

Jumpscares and ghost stories are like quick, indulgent snacks—delicious, filling, but containing so little nutritional value as to be almost meaningless. Phobias and anxiety have more meat to them, but lack the important detail of long-term sustainment. But large fears—born of wide-scale tragedy, bigotry, lies— _those_ push his power into exponential growth.

He melodramatically swoons and lays over a decorative chimney, and watches the Sandman cheerfully finish up his work in this region and nod off to the next one. He waits there, draped over the chimney for another few minutes until the brilliance of the sand dims as it takes on a flow of its own. He hauls himself up, smooths his robes, and struts around the rooftop to examine the area.

Since his last major confrontation with the Guardians that fateful Easter, he’s been hovering around the equator. It doesn’t provide nearly enough nighttime for him to be truly comfortable or rested, but he counts on that to divert them. He occasionally makes a few dashes to the subtropical regions for good measure, making sure to not go too far into the colder area. That little ice twerp still has it out for him, and his unpredictability and legendary snitching skills are the last things Pitch needs as he recovers.

Pitch takes stock of the different pools of dreamsand. The winding roads of adorable houses with lawns and cul-de-sacs have stronger streams leading to happy, safe children who have never known a single hardship. It’s easier to throw them off-kilter, but there are far fewer of them, and they tend to cry out for the Guardians’ help as soon as anything goes wrong.

Meanwhile the apartments have many more sleeping children, but they are more jaded. If they dream at all, then they’re already on the verge of nightmare, and he must use that much more energy to escalate it from resignation to genuine fear.

Big fear, small fear.

Movement on the roof of the apartment building catches his eye. A humanoid figure in a long, flowing, hooded robe with a huge bow across their back, packs along their belt, and an empty quiver at their hip moves down the side to a large, swirling mass of dreamsand. They roam from window to window before finally settling for one and easing themself through the solid pane of glass.

“Oh...” Pitch whispers. His lips curl into a smirk, and a small nightmare emerges from the shadow at his feet. It’s no larger than a Shetland pony, but it will do for now.

“Keep watch,” he says. The nightmare snorts and leaps off the roof, disassembling into sand and flying over to the building.

Pitch sits back down on the chimney, crossing one leg over the other, waiting.

*************

As you move through the window, you see now that the room has three kids huddled together on the floor in cartoon-printed sleeping bags, surrounded by empty boxes of sweets. You unhook the rope from your belt and let it hang outside. Crossing the room, you draw out two empty vials and scoop some of the liquid-like grains just inside the window in one, seal it, and unstopper the next as you loom over the children. Of the three, the one snuggled deep into a near-threadbare sleeping bag has the most shifting in the halo of golden… well you haven’t decided if it was liquid or sand yet; you’re more than sure it is, at least, magical.

After you carefully tease some of the active gold into the vial and tuck it away, you take a deep breath, rub your hands together, and produce your own glowing stream. It drifts from your fingertips like an oil puddle, rippling out in an iridescent rainbow against mirror-like black. You reach out with it and softly touch the halo of gold, pressing for a moment until you see it catch.

Slowly, your power weaves around the gold, and the frantic shifting of shapes—rabbit, cat, trees, firework sparks—slows until nothing but the rabbit hops languidly around and around. Suddenly, the rabbit stands upright on its hind legs and dons a cloak that waves majestically behind it. The child sighs in their sleep and shifts to their side.

The rabbit brandishes a sword as a dragon rises from the halo in front of it, puffing from its mouth. The rabbit charges. The dragon stands its ground and inhales. Right as the rabbit makes contact, the dragon unleashes a flurry of what you assume is fire, and once it clears, the rabbit is nowhere to be seen, its sword and cape the only things left. The child flinches in their sleep, making a noise like a soft sob, and curls their knees to their chest.

“Fuck,” you whisper. “Oh no...”

You instinctively try to reach out to them, but your hand moves right through their shoulder. Old habits die hard, but thankfully the kid is undisturbed. You sigh, half in relief and half in resignation, and you run a hand over your face before taking out another vial to scoop up the changed substance.

“That should do it,” you say, corking it and tucking it away. You take out a notepad and jot a few things down. Then you turn to the other two to take a few observations when one of them stirs and sits up.

You freeze. The little girl rubs her eyes and looks around. She sees her friends still sleeping, and then crawls over to the one you were just examining. Rather than shaking them awake, however, she watches the changed halo. You’ve never seen a member of the living notice these phenomena, but to be fair you rarely leave the forest during the days. Plus, if your first life is any indication, there are certain to be people who at least believe in the strange; and since it’s been proven true, who’s to say it’s not possible for a fraction of them to see it?

And then the young girl reaches out toward the swirling halo.

“No!” you cry, rushing forward. Instinct. Old habits. You’ll eventually get used to— But instead of passing through, your hand connects with her wrist.

Your eyes widen. The girl snaps her attention to you. She looks you directly in the eye.

*************

Pitch watches through his nightmare’s eyes as this pitifully naive spirit makes first contact with a human child. They make a strangled noise, extract their hand, and jump back one step. The little girl freezes, eyes wide with abject terror. A shiver of delight ripples through him as the surprise and fear drips from the both of them, and the nightmare trembles and twitches.

"Easy, easy," Pitch tells it, but he also wants more. His control slips.

The shadows shift, erupting from the far corner and spreading across the walls and ceiling. The spirit tears their eyes away from the child to watch it spread, even more confused than three seconds ago. The shadows congeal and started reaching tendrils toward the center of the room.

The little girl follows their gaze until she spots the encroaching shadows. This time, there is no hesitation.

“Wake up! Wakeupwakeupwakeup!”

She shoves her friends awake, and the golden halos disintegrate. They wake suddenly, but are slow to move until she points out the shadows. That’s when they scream and huddle together on the opposite side of the room. Pitch feels a pang of pride tinged with disappointment as he realizes they know what’s happening. Oh, they know of him, and they know to fear him.

The spirit retreats toward the window, backing up step by step to keep their eyes on the shadows. And the more they watch, the more their mind races. Flashes of fears from their mortal life rakes across Pitch’s mind—dinosaurs, the dark, the emptiness of the universe, a near-death experience. He twists one of the shadows in their periphery until it looks like a lunging tyrannosaurus rex. They flinch and stumble to the window. Nearly hyperventilating, they try to shove through the glass.

The window pane makes a dull clunk as they bounce against it. Their dread gives way to panic.

By this point, the children have slid out of the room, and Pitch can vaguely hear an adult groggily stumbling down the hallway. But he’s nearly too far gone to care. This is interesting right now—this clearly new spirit grappling with a level of fear they haven’t yet come across before. The spirit gives a strangled cry and pounds their hands on the glass, begging to be let through. Pitch inhales the wild energy and loses any hold he has over the nightmare.

*************

The shadows congeal until an emaciated horse on four tiny, spindly legs emerge from them and charge. You turn around, a hand going to the iridescent recurve bow on your back. You tap the glass with your fingers, but it just slides down the pane until it lands pitifully on the sash.

The sash. The sash! A spark jolts you as you lift the physical window open and grab the rope waving in the breeze. The creature bites your leg, sinking its fangs just above your ankle.

“Aaargh!”

Kicking out, you connect with its snout and it lets go, a small spray coming off. You hesitate for a moment as you see that the black substance is almost identical to the golden sand-liquid from before. In a split second, you swing back through the window, reach out, and swipe your fingers through the dark horse’s snout. It breaks apart into small grains and screams in rage as you close your fist around a small bit of it and leap from the window. You use your momentum to swing and run up the brick wall to the roof. As you land—three-point superhero style—the adrenaline rush catches up and nearly bowls you over into the rubber roof covering.

“Heh heh.” The chuckle starts low as you fumble for an empty vial. As you drag one out, you shake like you’re crashing from three cups of espresso. 

“Hohohoooohmygooood...” About half of the black stuff ends up glittering and writhing on the rooftop, but you have enough of a sample to make the effort worth it. You’re grinning despite your heartbeat arrythmically pulsing in all of your limbs, and all you can think about is getting it on a centrifuge or a slide so you can observe, dissect, and then start jamming it into your fermenting alchemies. “HahaHA!!!”

A soft rattling moves in from the side of the building, and the first tendrils of the shadows start creeping over the edge of the roof. You nearly choke trying to suppress your laughter, but hold it together enough to gather yourself, shoot a rope to the nearest tree, and shriek with laughter into the night with your prizes.

*************

As the spirit strikes the nightmare, Pitch is thrown out of the connection. He falls to his knees, breathing deeply and quickly, coming down from the high of fear. His pulse almost deafens him, but he picks up a manic laugh from across the way. He stands in time to see the new spirit holding a small bottle into the air, grinning like their face has stuck that way. But the rogue nightmare starts crawling over the roof, spooking the spirit.

They quickly draw their bow and reach to the empty quiver. The quiver produces an arrow with a rope tied to it, which the spirit shoots over the opposite end of the building and slides down a zip line.

Pitch finally moves as they disappear over the edge. He swoops over the roof as the wave of shadow sand spills onto it. His head clear, he stands before the nightmare, hands behind his back, heels digging into the roof. As the wild wave crashes down, he grips the nightmare and wrangles it back into its small, stunted form.

“Shh, shh...” He strokes its back until it calms and ebbs back into his own shadow. The flashes of the spirit’s fears and dreams merge with his consciousness, and he muses for a moment. But another whoop of delight echoes from the edge of the forest, and he purses his lips thoughtfully.

“I wonder,” he murmurs to himself. “Have you met anyone yet? Have you realized you’re not alone?” A thought crosses his mind. “Could you possibly be open for a friend—any friend that may cross your path, even?”

The beginnings of a plan start to form in his mind, and he melts into the shadows to follow their trail, laughter echoing behind him.


	2. Desperate Alchemy

Thankfully, Pitch has patience. He tracks the spirit down deep into the local forest, to a haphazardly built treehouse. The beams stick out at odd angles, the shingles coil and overlap themselves leading up to a crooked peak, nails and splinters jut out of the muddy mortar squeezed between any opening, and the tree and its vines wrap protectively around it in an off-putting silhouette. He can only presume it’s held together with either way too many nails or the will of its creator. Perhaps both.

He hangs around the lopsided structure, waiting to see this spirit work. Unfortunately, they almost immediately shutter themself into a windowless room of their base, and all Pitch can do is press his ear up against the splintery walls, listening to the spirit murmur and chatter to themself. A habit he’s well-acquainted with.

“The black sand falls directly into the category of ‘magical substance.’ Right alongside the four-leaf clovers, moon resin, colored eggshells, antler remnants, both the small colorful feathers and giant goose feathers, and, of course, the golden sand,” they say about three days in. “However, it seems to have capabilities to create a semi-corporeal form in the shape of a starving horse, which normally I would classify as ‘magical apparition,’ much like the will-o-the-wisps, moonbeams, or grounded rainbows.

“However, much like how the rainbows seemingly create patches of the magical clovers where they touch the earth, and how the bright resin only appears after the full moon, so too is there a possibility that the apparition and substance are reliant on each other to exist.”

Pitch leans back from the glorified shed, amused smile crossing his face. “A little scientist on a constant quest for answers…” he says. “This will be easier than I thought.”

He slips away about a hundred yards, where he can still barely make out the treehouse clearing through the dense canopy, and starts creating an entrance to his realm. He does this slowly and methodically, trying not to use up too much of his small pool of energy at once nor trying to catch the attention of the Guardians. He’s far enough south that Frost would have trouble, but the rabbit or fairy? Certainly the Sandman regularly appears. Nonetheless, he carefully chips his way into his realm, warping the tree he chooses as the doorway into a gnarled, screaming shadow of itself. The rest of the time, he listens to the spirit.

They isolate themself for a solid week, finally emerging on the first night of the waxing crescent. Pitch watches them take a deep breath, glance to the sky, and take off into the dark wood. He melts into the shadows and follows not far behind.

*************

A chemist in life, you now revel in the opportunities your afterlife has given you to continue your work. But better—now there were tons of new items to sift through and magic to discover. By the end of the week, you determine three things about the black sand:

“One—It is similar in structure, aesthetic, and texture to the golden sand. They both behave more like glitter and dye suspended in water than simply as sand particles and have a similar base energy coming from them, suggesting the same origin.

“Two—Unlike the golden sand, the black sand doesn’t induce lethargy or sleep. It does, however, induce anxiety. It doesn’t matter if the substance is ingested, applied topically or subcutaneously, or presented in proximity, the effect is the same. Presumably, it’s stronger with more of the substance present, as is true with the golden sand.

“Three—This substance is one of a mere few magical ones I’ve come in contact with in this short eternity. And much like all these other previous substances, the black sand can mix and interact with the other magical substances, provided my own iridescent secretion—POWER—that my power is used as the catalyst.”

The experiments you’ve run on the golden sand mixed with your power echo the same findings. Whatever it is you produce is fairly benign on its own. It has an effect on people, especially children, if they come in contact with it, and it seems to act as a kind of stimulant. Every human immediately lights up and starts babbling about art projects or writing or a play or a hobby of theirs when you touch them with it. But they don’t seem harmed.

“More research needed,” you say concluding your speech into a stolen recorder.

Depositing your equipment, you gather your bag, bow, and quiver. You throw your hood up and make your way out. The fresh air is welcome. The moon has begun waxing since your expedition last week, so Selene is no longer in the sky. You’re disappointed, but after concluding the experiments, you’re more than itching to wander around the dark forest, perhaps finding more components.

You throw a quick glance up to the moon, hoping she can still see you, and you dash into the night.

You stop by your usual haunts: a fairy ring you’ve been watching, just in case; a deteriorating deer stand the moon resin regularly collects on; and a deep, transparent spring in the middle of a clearing. You drink the water—old habits, sure, but the relieving feeling of cold water running through your body still exists and still feels wonderful after rushing around all night. Settling down and turning on a small lantern, you sit to sort out your haul and take notes.

“And just who could this be?” You jump as a deep, quiet voice comes from the edge of the treeline. Lantern in hand, you swing it around wildly, trying to see who or what spoke. There’s a quiet gasp—or a small gust of wind—and then the incredulous voice, “Hello there?”

_A disembodied voice… no physical shape, just speech…_ That _night…_ Deja vu overwhelms you, and you shake your head to clear it. _No,_ you decide, _this is a different voice from that night._ The other had a different, more distinct accent.

The voice speaks once again, saying, “Ah… of course they can’t hear. Just a human after all.”

The voice starts to drift. The sounds of plants and leaves crunching under footsteps moves away, threatening to leave you alone in the dark yet again. For the most part, you’ve been content with your afterlife. It’s given you so many opportunities that the restrictions of society never did. But it has been a lonesome existence. No one to prattle on to about your projects; no one to speak to except the theoretical other chemists who will likely never come across your recordings.

You had been shocked the first time a human walked straight through you. A shiver ran up your spine, and the existential dread that had been pooling in your subconscious spilled over into your full consciousness.

It spills over again in this moment, as the disappointed muttering moves farther and farther into the dark.

“W-wait!” You leap up and chase after the voice. “I’m not a human! I can hear you!”

You rush into the trees, heart pounding in your ears, fighting back the skepticism hissing in your mind. Coincidences don’t sit well with you. First the little girl, then a mysterious voice barely a week later? After seventy-five years? But… they’d seen you. You are visible to someone. You hold your arm out in front of you, hoping to come in contact with the owner of the voice.

“Come back! I hear you!”

Your hand crunches up as you run directly into a tree. You hiss and shake your wrist to stop the pain. Reaching out with your other hand, you feel your way around the tree, squinting into the barely-lit night, trying to see the one who spoke. You pause and strain your ears. Silence. Utter, complete, oppressive silence that makes the shadowed trees threaten to rise up and swallow you whole.

“I’m here...” you whisper.

You take in a jagged inhale that catches on the growing lump in your throat. You blink, and the dark world around you blurs. You stand there for a moment, controlling your breathing and willing your tears to go away. After minutes of feeling your pulse make laps around your body, you, trembling, wander back to the edge of the spring, sit, and hug your knees to your chin.

“I’m here,” you whisper to no one, again.

*************

As the spirit trudges back to their home, Pitch follows silently. Step one: complete. The spirit still acts so human, it can’t be more than a century since they entered their new existence. The human mindset always seeks out companionship—comfort after a nightmare, friendship even from a toxic influence—and that need never quite goes away. He had been too little, too late to bring Frost over to his side, but what luck he’s found this time.

“New heartbreak gives way to naked fear,” he says, petting a nightmare at his side. “And distance makes the heart grow fonder.”

For two days, he watches the spirit. The first day, they dash around the nearby woods, calling out, “Hello? It’s me from last night! I heard you.” They keep at it until sunset, when they finally return to their base and lock themself in their lab, slamming the rickety door so hard one of the criss-crossing boards cracks across its length. Pitch listens to them pace back and forth at their work, recording notes in a haughty tone of voice, occasionally breaking on a sob. They don’t emerge until the next night. As soon as darkness falls—earlier than usual, thanks to the overcast weather—they slam the door open and take off in the direction of the city. Once among the streets, the spirit takes small, round pellets out of their belt

“Power catalyst experiment, round one,” they mutter quickly to themself, shaking so hard they nearly drop one of the pellets. “Target...” they look around wildly, quickly focusing on someone zoning out at a bus stop, “adult, about 250 pounds, anywhere between 5’ 5” and 5’ 8” when standing. Mixture is one part catalyst, one part moon resin, one part feather tuft.”

The spirit winds up and lobs the pellet at the human. It catches their shoulder and explodes on contact. The human jolts lightly and blinks tiredly before settling back into their wait. Pitch gazes on as a small film of color settles over the human. It flares up, and then fades. For a moment, nothing happens, and the spirit deflates. They walk over just as the human sits up straight and starts mouthing words, looking off into the distance. The human takes out their phone, and starts typing something. The spirit looks on, confused but focused. Eventually, the human starts crying, dials on their phone, gets up, and leaves, bus forgotten.

Pitch watches as the spirit, seemingly encouraged by this turn of events, rushes off to harass another human. He smiles, though still thoroughly confused as what just transpired.

“I’ll catch the recording later,” he drawls, summoning a wave of black sand.

He sends it out to swirl at the edges of their vision, to sneak up on them and brush their arms and cheeks. Slowly, over the next few hours, as the spirit pelts several more humans, they spin around at each touch with wide eyes. And with each brief contact, Pitch can feel their rising heartbeat, their quickening breaths, their growing anticipation.

Eventually, the jumpy spirit makes their way back to the forest. They’re moving slowly, twitching at every sound, one hand at their hip to draw an arrow.

Pitch has the sand catch their shoulder and run down the side of their body. They go stock still for a moment, and their anxiety spikes. Pitch moves directly behind them and raises a hand for another swipe, one tiny chuckle escaping.

They whip around. Pitch isn’t prepared as their ready hand grabs the front of his robes, and he’s suddenly face to face with the close, desperate, determined glare of the spirit. This close, he can feel their fear still rising, see every microtwitch of their muscles as they fight against the instinct to run away. Their eyes search for a moment in the dark before finally landing on his glowing gaze.

“All right, friend,” they say with a shaky breath. “Who are you, how can you see me, and how many more of us are there?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanna say this is the fastest thing ive written in literal years and i have a fnucking creative writing degree. now i just gotta make sure my "good writer" instincts stay dead n buried so i can just write for personal satisfaction *cough* and not worry about everything being ready for big 5 publication


	3. The Ancient Forest Spirit

You have, you assume, the owner of the voice from a few nights ago. Here, right in front of you, frozen in your grasp. You’re verging into a panic attack, and it’s only your years of therapy in life keeping you grounded and breathing evenly.

“Please,” you say. “Tell me.”

The owner of the glowing eyes stammers for a moment. His eyes dart back and forth before settling on yours again and softening.

“I… I am sorry. About the other night.” His voice is deep and apologetic. “I just couldn’t believe… after all this time….”

Your grip loosens, and the other spirit relaxes. But you still hold on, not wanting this to be a dream, for him to disappear. A lump reappears in your throat. Your nose burns, and tears are close to spilling down. You turn your head, trying to catch your breath and control yourself. A hand gently cups your chin and guides your face back up, a thumb brushing your cheek to wipe away the tears. Those eyes burn with a comforting fire.

“How long have you been here like this?” he whispers.

You reply, “Seventy-five years at the next new moon.”

He inhales sharply, closing his eyes. You feel him shake. He mutters softly, almost beyond your ability to hear, “Practically a newborn...”

You scoff and remove his hand from your face with your free hand, clenching and twisting it in warning. He blinks.

“Maybe compared to eternity,” you say. “But I had a decent life before I died. Thirty-eight years. Still young, but it’s not like I died a teenager.” You let go of his wrist and lean back. “And how old are you?”

He pauses. His eyes cloud over and slide away. He pulls out of your grip on his robe, and moves to the side a few paces. As soon as he’s free of your grasp, you can only track him by his footsteps and the glow of his eyes, and you feel empty and alone. Contact with the girl a week ago is nothing, just a surprise you’re not even sure truly happened anymore—not that you’ve made an effort to revisit that apartment. Not that you’re sure you want to test it.

You stumble after him a few steps, reaching out and catching what feels like his elbow. He jolts out of his reverie, and his stark gaze glances from where your hand is back to your eyes. You quickly let go, embarrassed, and put your hands on your hips, raising an eyebrow.

“Well?”

“I apologize. I’m afraid I simply don’t know how to answer that, as I have no idea how old I might be.” He turns away, walks a few steps, and turns back. “Walk with me. You live in the, um, shack deep in the forest, correct?”

You groan and laugh, following his voice and light footfalls. “Yes, my lab. I used to be a chemist, so I built one to keep going. Unfortunately, immortality doesn’t automatically grant you construction knowledge. But it works.”

He laughs in return and glides through the forest ahead of you. You walk in companionable silence for a bit, him turning around every so often to make sure you’re there. Eventually, your lab comes into view, barely visible against the night. You start to make your way for the ladder when his hand shoots out and grasps your shoulder. He turns you to face him again, and his eyes look troubled.

“What’s wrong,” you ask.

He mulls it over, hemming and hawing, searching for words. “Earlier…” he pauses. “Did you imply that you died before becoming a spirit?”

“Of course I did. How else would I be this way?”

There’s a long pause. His eyes turn from troubled to pity, and he places his other hand on your empty shoulder, holding you so that you face each other exactly.

“Most spirits have either always been spirits, such as myself, or they were humans granted immortality and powers by other, older spirits.”

_The pain shooting through your chest, fresh now, as another pike drives through your back and stops at the edge of your drowning heart. The chaos around you culminating in the loudest standoff that you’re not able to hear. The only stability, the gap in the sky where she floats silently, closed eye watching intently._

“It is rare—almost unheard of—for a spirit to ascend in such a way by experiencing a terrible, mortal end.”

_All of the pain and grief: unnecessary._

“I’m so sorry,” he says as your mind spirals.

*************

He means that. On some base level, Pitch pities their circumstances. It’s hard enough being alone and invisible, always difficult when he can feel their helplessness and trauma. But to experience those things on top of such violence? Poetically tragic.

The spirit’s dread spikes as they process what he’s just said. _A hole in the pit of your stomach,_ he muses. _That gnawing at your heart._ Hunger replaces his pity, and he refocuses.

“I should have held my tongue,” he says. “That’s a terribly sensitive topic that I have no right to—”

“It’s all right,” they say, gesturing vaguely. But he knows it’s not, and has not been for awhile. “Knowing is better than ignorance. Besides, now I know there are plenty of other… ghosts? Spirits?”

“‘Spirits’ is the general term.”

“Spirits. I only found out I wasn’t alone two days ago, and now I know there’s many, many more out there who could see me and speak to me.”

Pitch catches a laugh in his throat. He grits his teeth and tries to choose his next words carefully, though it still comes out as a growl, “They might… perhaps.”

Their heartbeat jerks at his tone. How sweet. He clears his throat and continues, “Some of the more powerful spirits can be a little exclusive about who they befriend or even deign to speak to.”

They narrow their eyes.

“I wish it weren’t true, but the powerful spirits keep to themselves in their own little club. They like to think they rule the world.” The spirit raises an eyebrow and bites their lip. "The more power they have, the more they want to keep for themselves." 

The spirit says, “Are you... implying that you’re not very powerful for an ancient spirit?”

Pitch is dumbfounded, and then snarls. “I should have you know that those spirits are nothing before my knowledge and power!” He shakes and paces in a wild circle. “All of them together could barely produce a spark that I could summon with a subconscious blink! Those spoiled, stuck up fools could never—”

A stifled giggle interrupts his speech. He whips around to the spirit, only to see their eyes sparkling with mischief and a poorly hidden grin on their face. Pitch deflates for a moment, grateful that the dark hides his creeping dark gray flush. He _tsks,_ smooths his hair back, straightens his spine, and approaches the spirit, who has recovered significantly from their earlier existential musings.

 _All the time in the world to change that,_ he reminds himself. He claps slowly three times, and says, “Very cheeky. I see that this life has granted you a sense of humor.”

“If you knew me when I was actually alive, you’d know I have a transcendent sense of humor.” They smile warmly, then smirk. “With all your immense, ancient power, hopefully you can keep up with it.”

Pitch smiles, opening his mouth to reply, but he then realizes that the dark shadows covering the both of them are thinning. Looking to the east through the dense trees, he watches as the dark sky is graying into the early dawn. He curses. In his peripheral vision, the spirit turns the same direction.

“Sunrise?”

“Yes,” Pitch sighs. “And that means I must go.”

“Wha—?”

Pitch starts for the denser part of the wood. He’s a mere three yards away when the spirit grabs his arm. He yanks out of their grasp, but only gets another step and a half when they wrap their hands around both of this arms from behind.

“Don’t go! Please.”

Pitch tempers his breath, but his time as a mere silhouette is limited, and it’s too early for the grand reveal.

“I’m afraid I must. The sun and I are definitive enemies.” He twists around, extricating himself from their iron grip and gently gathering their hands in his. “I hope… I hope I haven’t mislead you about the nature of our existence. There are many wonderful and intriguing aspects to being a spirit, but as you will eventually discover, there are certain… limitations. Drawbacks.

“I am...” he fakes a beleaguered sigh to stall, “a rather old… forest spirit. But I can only exist in the darkness.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” they reply.

Pitch glances at the continuously lightning sky and huffs. “This life rarely does, unfortunately. But for all I can do, I cannot go against my nature. And my nature is of the darkness; therefore I cannot exist in the light.”

“Not at all?”

“No. Not even under the moon as it grows in the sky. In a few weeks, I will have to make myself scarce until it wanes again.”

They whisper, barely audible, “That’s not fair.”

“I know.” Pitch squeezes their hands and slips into the deepest shadow near him. He reappears a distance away, takes shelter among the denser branches, and calls out, “But until the moon grows too bright… if you have any questions about this world… My ears are open.”

“What’s your name?” the spirit blurts out immediately.

Pitch scoffs. “I should ask you the same thing. You treat me to a wonderful night of companionship, and yet I don’t even know what to call you.”

“Stalker gets to go first.”

He can’t help the laugh that escapes, and he thinks on it. _A name, a name…_ What name can he possibly give to them? None of his obvious aliases—the Nightmare King or the Boogeyman is too forward. Best saved for later. His mind drifts further.

_A promise, given to his dearest. A promise yet unkept. The doors, as the darkness strains against them. He is stronger than them, he is sure and true, he is—_

“Kozmotis...” he murmurs, shaking off the odd feeling.

Yards away, the spirit tilts their head. “What was it?”

“Kozmotis,” he repeats, louder. Pitch isn’t sure where that came from, but a name is a name. The spirit rolls it around their tongue and smiles again.

“Well… Thank you, Kozmotis,” they say. “For letting me know I’m not alone in this life. Allow me to return the favor.”

Theirs is an old name, by human standards. Though, perhaps it has come back into fashion after three-quarters of a century. Regardless, it fits them, and Pitch tosses it around his head as he stalks back to the gnarled doorway of his hideout. Step two: complete.

*************

You spend most of the next day laying on the floor of your treehouse watching the sunbeams roam from one end of the room to the other. It’s the closest you’ve gotten to sleeping in a long time, and the first day you haven’t entered your lab since you built it. The encounter with Kozmotis plays again and again in your head, and you try to unpack all of what he said while also trying to hold on to the belief that he wasn’t an isolation-induced hallucination. And for once, you do this in complete silence, listening to exactly how quiet and apathetic the world around you is.

Tears slowly drip down your cheeks until well towards the evening. A bird or squirrel flies in front of your window, causing a large shadow to strobe along the opposite wall. You blink. You become achingly aware of your breathing and start to control it. Slow, deep breaths in, equally slow, deep breaths out. You finally speak.

“One—immortality is a lot more complicated than it initially appeared to be. Cliques of spirits apparently exist and freeze out other spirits, not unlike high school.” You physically cringe at the thought. “The fact remains that there are more spirits out there.

“Two—spirits apparently have limitations to their existences. Magical limitations. Kozmotis says he cannot exist in the light, and it stands to reason the other spirits he mentions have similar limitations… And it stands to reason that I do, too. I just have yet to find out what it is. Perhaps if I travel more, I’ll figure it out. Hopefully, it’s more complicated that not being able to fly.

“Three—I hadn’t realized how lonely I was...” The words surprise you as they exit your mouth, but you nod to yourself. “Seventy-five years of isolation flew by, and I thought I was fine. I had my lab, I had the forest, I had a more stable mindset than I ever had in life…”

Pausing, you sit up and crawl over to a low drawer in your handmade, very un-level counter. Opening the drawer, reaching inside, you draw out your old wallet. You flip it open and smile at the picture inside. But almost as quickly, anger and guilt rise up, and you slam the wallet closed, shove it back in the drawer, and wish you’d never given in to the impulse in the first place.

You return to laying on the floor, controlling your breath, as dusk gives way to darkness. The crescent moon and the stars just start to peek into your home when you hear something.

Footsteps. Slowly, lightly coming towards your home. You lay there, waiting as the noise grows and grows—and then stops. For a minute, the only sound is the ambiance of the night.

You hear your name, said in a voice deep and soft.

“Are you up there?”

You drag yourself up, slowly walk out to the tilted porch, and glance over the railing. Two golden-silver eyes find you in the darkness.

“Can you come out to play?”

“Sorry, I’m grounded,” you reply, crossing your arms and leaning on the railing. Kozmotis chuckles.

“Is that going to stop you?”

You hoist one leg onto the railing and hurl yourself over, landing a few feet away from where those eyes mark the spirit. They’re wide in surprise. Readjusting yourself, you walk over and shake your head.

“Not at all. Let’s go.”


	4. In The Dim Moonlight

The next several days are taken up with watching the spirit make notes and follow up on hypotheses and mixtures, while the nights alternate between further excursions into the city and walking around the dark forest with Pitch.

At about the fourth night, the spirit sets up a small archery range. Pitch finds them trying to attach something to the head of an arrow.

“Going hunting?” he asks, adjusting his voice low as usual. They perk up as they hear the voice, and turn toward the source of the sound.

“It seems like my arrows don’t connect with humans—just fly right through them—but the concoctions I’ve made will affect them. And it can alter their emotional states into… inspiration? I don’t know, this one human I tossed a mixture of nostalgia and comfort at suddenly started crying and called someone saying something about a memoir.”

They ramble on about the excruciating details they’d eavesdropped in on. Pitch watches them gesture, speak with their hands in between adjusting the arrow tip. He approaches and places a hand on their shoulder, leaning down to ask, “Forgive my interruption, but did you learn to handle a bow after you became a spirit, or were you adept before?”

They twitch at the touch, the close proximity, then relax. It’s become a predictable quirk. They clear their throat.

“Before. I grew up in a city not too far from here. My family went on camping or hunting trips a lot, though, so I learned from an early age.”

“You often went into the wilderness with your parents?”

They shrug. “Just a bit. They were bigger into it than I was, but I felt like a…” They chuckle. “Like a hero with the bow. So I kept at it, even when I wasn’t going camping.”

They set down their arrows and sigh, looking into the distance, not expanding on anything. Pitch notices that they tend to play their hand close to their chest. Despite their desperation for contact and their quick comebacks, their willingness to divulge so much about their life is marked by the realization that they reveal almost nothing of substance. There’s only so far that his abilities to see someone’s fears can take him. This spirit has many regrets haunting them, but it only manifests in his awareness as a creeping, sinking aura. He takes their chin and tilts their face up to meet his gaze. They huff and frown, but don’t pull away.

“I know we’ve barely known each other,” he says slowly. “But I can tell you’re hiding something… terrible. I understand. I’ve seen it before, in other spirits. The transition, even after a century, is not always the easiest to accept or rationalize.”

Their gaze unfocuses, and they pull away to stare into the darkness again. He continues.

“Don’t get me wrong: I’m not here to pry. But please understand that I have witnessed this before. And witnessed the terrible downfalls of young spirits who tried to pretend they had no life before immortality.”

“What happened to them?” The spirit mumbles this as they finish attaching the arrow tip.

Pitch draws out the silence, contorting his face into the semblance of guilt and terror. Eventually, the spirit looks up, confused then shocked as they catch on the mere expression in his eyes. He drags the silence out further, averting his eyes and shifting back a few steps.

“What… what happened to them, Kozmotis?”

A thing about fear that most spirits fail to understand—especially the Guardians and their stubborn ideas of what is and is not worthy of their ire—is that more often than not, specific details shine too much light onto the monsters of the mind. Once a fear has been revealed, it is solid, stable, knowable. Defeatable. But keep it shadowed, allow only glimpses from peripheral vision, and the mind will fill in the rest. So, all Pitch did to reply to the spirit, was to inhale shakily, and whisper:

“They… fell apart. Mentally…” The spirit pauses their fiddling. “… Physically…” Pitch turns back towards them, bores his gaze deep into theirs, and says, “Please just promise me you won’t cut yourself off like that.”

Immediately, the spirit’s stomach churns with pity and nervousness and… guilt? He feels their mind racing to the worst-case scenarios. Better still: a spark of morbid curiosity among the fear to draw them in further. Pitch has to hold himself back, remind himself that playing the long game will be all the sweeter.

The spirit stands, strings their bow, reaches back to their empty quiver, nocks a new arrow, and fires directly into the bulls-eye thirty yards away. Actually quite impressive, considering they have such limited night vision and the glowing luminaries barely lit the path. The spirit then turns and reaches blindly through in the dark until their hand lands on his arm.

“You’re right. I have my secrets, but I’m just… not ready to tell you,” they say. Pitch starts to say something, but they cut him off. “But I hope to tell you soon.”

They smile, and spend the next few hours hollowly chatting about their observations with minor interjections from Pitch here and there, until he has to fade into the brightening forest. The spirit heads back to their home, and, with one last glance, disappears within the lab to presumably create more arrows or mixtures. Pitch watches them go, leaning on his tree thoughtfully.

_Her smile, her stubbornness. Elegant and witty. She strolls along the halls, playfully exasperated at the child in her grasp. And she disappears with a scream._

Pitch blinks the vision away, panting and sweating, and most of it disappears like a dream upon waking. He shakes his head, tempers his breathing, and wrangles control of the swirling sand that suddenly threatens to consume him.

The fattening moon flares its light onto the clearing, and Pitch gives the Man in the Moon a sarcastic salute. Before he enters his domain for the day, he barely catches a glimpse of colorful ribbons of light swirling down from the north.

*************

Every night the moon grows, and every night you hate it a little bit more. Now, not only does the it block out Selene, but it ticks down the limited time you have with Kozmotis until there’s one night left. You know he’ll be back (so he says), so it’s only a matter of waiting until the nights get darker again. You almost wish the two of you had never met. Perhaps you weren’t one-hundred-percent well in the seventy-five years you thought you were a ghost, but you were comfortable, you were content to live alone and lonely, impending madness be damned.

Now… now there’s hope for something better. Now there’s hope for friendship, for companionship, for someone to appreciate your endeavors and for you to encourage in return. With Kozmotis’ entrance, your afterlife has been upended in a terrible, wonderful, excruciating way.

And you don’t want it to end.

You work until you have a whole cachet of modified arrows, and one by one, you slip them into your quiver. They disappear, as all your arrows do. This is one of the perks of this life: convenient storage. You eventually want to try and get to the bottom of that one, but physics is the branch of science where you learned just enough to apply to your area of study and then ignored in favor of the things that actually made sense. Once all of them go in, you reach for a specific one, and it manifests in your hand.

Perfect.

Decades of research, of personal trial and error, of slow and methodical observations. And then in barely three weeks of moving experimentation to more hands-on methodology: breakthrough after breakthrough. Everything is moving fast, and you hope you can keep up.

As midday breaks into the forest, you wander out onto your porch and take in the fresh air. You have your arrows, your bow, and your plan. An empty feeling spreads through your being as your heartbeat spikes. Everything falls into place in a way you didn’t think could happen within one century. So… what next? You stand there for two hours, alternating between rushing thoughts and silence in your mind.

Finally, you dash back in to your lab, grab your creations, and run towards the city.

You haven’t seen it during the day in quite possibly twenty-five or so years. It’s bustling at two in the afternoon, with people moseying through the wide streets, bouncing from sidewalk to sidewalk, approaching the pop-up booths and food trucks on either side. The people wear bright, light clothing, often without any sleeves to their names. Lampposts lining the downtown thoroughfares have small flags on them that advertise a summer barbecue festival. Just under the thicker, muggy air, the smells of hearty meats and veggies roasted in vinegar and mustard sauces reach you, making your mouth water enough to make you think about eating for the first time in ages. And under those smells: the hint of brackish brine that comes with coastal living. You lower your hood to take it all in properly.

For a split-second, you’re self-conscious of the weapon you’re carrying in public, of your ridiculous cosplay-level clothing. No one blinks in your direction.

“I really wish Kozmotis was here…” you mumble. The anxiety passes enough to allow you to continue through the crowd, nabbing an empanada and plantain chips to munch on.

The atmosphere is nothing short of joyous. There are a few stages set up along the car-free road, and their individual sounds bounce off the skyscrapers and brick buildings until they collide with each other in mid-air. And yet, the closer you get to one stage, the easier it is to envelop yourself in the band.

You walk to the front of the crowd, ignoring the chilling sensation that hits you whenever a human passes through you. Standing there, listening to the set, feeling the crowd around you, savoring fresh food—you almost feel alive, and you willingly lose yourself in that fantasy.

These are your neighbors, who are so glad you’ve come to experience the city. They’ve missed you, where have you been? They draw you into a deep hug, kiss your cheeks in greeting, and you return the gestures. It’s time to set aside any worry and spend a whole day overeating, chatting, and just being together. The song comes to an end, and the crowd cheers and claps. You join in, beaming.

“’Scuse me. ‘Scuse me.”

Someone pushes through the crowd. They pass right through you, and the illusion you’re in shatters. The band starts clearing off the stage, their set over, and the crowd disperses. More humans slide through you, around you, not looking at you or acknowledging your presence, and suddenly the crowd looms over you yet again.

You stand there for awhile. Time means nothing.

When you look up again, there’s a new band onstage doing checks, and a new bunch of humans have shored up to listen. You take a step to the side, and something crunches under your boot. Looking down, there’s the rest of your plantain chips, crumbled on the asphalt.

There’s a tug on your shirt, and when you look, you see a young girl staring worriedly up at you. You blink; she looks familiar.

“Are you okay?”

She doesn’t break eye contact with you. You sharply inhale as you realize this is the same young girl from a few weeks ago, at the sleepover where everything went wrong, then right. Sniffing, you realize your cheeks have dried tears on them. You wipe them away, then weakly wave still not quite understanding. She waves back and hugs your leg.

“Thank you for saving us from the boogeyman that one time,” she says.

You suppress an incredulous swear. You reach out…

“Alisah!”

The little girl swivels her head at the name. She waves wildly, one hand still clinging to you.

“Grampa! Over here!”

An elder man’s head pops up over the crowd, searching. Alisah jumps, waving her hand over her head and shouting again. Finally, the man catches sight of his granddaughter through the crowd. He starts making his way over, and then pauses. Looking directly at you. Alisah smiles and points vigorously at you.

“Hey, man! Watch out,” someone near him says.

Alisah’s grampa turns to apologize, and you make a break for it. You yank out of Alisah’s grasp and hurl yourself through the crowd. At first, you dodge between the people—old habits returning in your panic—but very quickly you just make a beeline for the edge of the crowd and beyond.

“Hey!” comes the voice of the little girl, followed quickly by a “No, wait! Please!” from the old man. You force yourself not to turn around as their voices fade into the thrum of the crowd and the pounding pulse in your ears.

_Mistake,_ you say to yourself over and over as you book it to the safe isolation of the forest. _Mistake, mistake, mistake._

*************

“Kozmotis!”

Pitch barely has time to get his bearings that night. As soon as he settles his form into the darkened wood, pounding footfalls rush towards him. He turns in time to see the spirit catch sight of his glowing eyes right in front of them and fail to slow, skidding and barreling right into his gut.

“Agck—!”

The wind gets knocked right out of him, and he’s pinned against his tree by the spirit. He coughs, trying to catch his breath.

“Sorry…” they wheeze.

He can feel their heartbeat against his chest. They are far too close together.

Gently but purposefully, Pitch pushes them an arm’s length away, though he keeps his hands on their shoulders. He’s a little jealous; whatever has spooked the spirit isn’t directly his fault. He reaches out to the specific pool of anxiety he’s been working on, finding it close to overflowing, but still contained. The rest of their fear swirls around, and he catches glimpses of a crowd, a child, loneliness, and regret. He inhales sharply at the taste. The black sand starts swirling at his feet, and he has to fight to make it recede.

_Not yet._

“Easy there, friend,” he says. He leads the spirit to an overturned log and sits them down. They’re trembling, glistening with sweat, their chest heaving. Not. Yet. He squeezes their arm, and they grasp his to return the gesture. “What happened? You look like you’ve been racing death.”

A pang rattles through the spirit, and their breath hitches on a laugh interrupted by a sob.

_Oh… Oh wait—_

“Oh, no… I apologize that was very tactless—” Pitch stammers.

They cut him off. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”

_That’s a lie._ The sentiment must echo in his eyes, because the spirit sighs and says, “Yeah, that’s a lie.”

Pitch sits down next to them, sorting through their fear as they sort through their thoughts.

“I’m a nervous wreck. I have been for my whole life. Did therapy and everything, which got it under control, but I was still always living at a minimum level of terrified.” They gaze off into the dark. “I thought I’d get over it once I became… this. But no dice. I was still just as pathetic and scared and avoidant as ever.” They slowly turn their face and glare at Pitch, frowning. “And then you showed up.”

Pitch is speechless. “I—” He can’t help but laugh. “I beg your pardon?”

“You just burst onto the scene, interrupted my eternal sulk, and…” The spirit laughs and smiles up at him, resting their chin on their hands. “And have been nothing but a welcoming beacon. I know we haven’t known each other long, but I really appreciate you. Thanks.”

Pitch smiles to himself. This is _wonderful_ news. They way they’re looking at him, deep in awe, like he's their only lifeline to sanity. Exactly what he wants and needs for the long game. He opens his mouth to give a reassuring, thankful spiel, but they cut him off again.

“Today… I found out there’s a young girl in the city who can see me. I thought I made her up a few weeks ago, but it turns out she’s real.” Pitch knows this was a possibility. After a certain point, the rules of their existence become plain. “She thanked me for saving her and her friends from the boogeyman.”

He balks. _NO. NOT… YET…_ The spirit notices his sharp inhale.

“Wait, is the boogeyman real? I mean, I guess that makes sense, but… I dunno it’s the _boogeyman._ I thought—”

“What’s wrong with the boogeyman?” Pitch demands. The spirit raises an eyebrow. He stutters and says, “Besides… the obvious.”

“Are you okay?”

“Dandy.”

“Did I touch a nerve?”

Pitch’s mind races to find an excuse, a reason, an explanation for how flustered he is. As he sputters, the edge of his concentration picks up rising anxiety from the extended silence. As well as a determined curiosity, an active process zipping through their mind. _(NOT. YET.)_ They reach out and feel for his hand, placing theirs on it when they find it.

“Kozmotis?” they say. When he doesn’t answer, they repeat, “Koz?”

“I—When I was—When I had many who believed in my power and potency…” It starts coming together in his mind. A wrench thrown into the gears, but nothing he can’t work around. “There were also many who saw my existence in the darkness, and believed me to be him. The boogeyman.

“They spat my name like a curse, burned parts of the forest to get rid of me, and persecuted those who still trusted me. And others worshiped me all the more in the hopes of finding favor with the boogeyman. It was a complicated time where I both gained and lost so much from the association. So yes, you ‘touched a nerve,’ so to speak.”

“Have you met him?”

“Yes, a few times.” Before the spirit can ask, Pitch continues, “He is full of self-loathing. And he's lonely. As many of us are.” His eyes unfocus and drift to the distance. “He’s filled with revenge fantasies against many of those spirits I spoke of awhile ago.”

“Oh…”

“It is _quite_ pathetic. But having experienced the anger and ostracizing zealotry—as well as overt awe—directed towards him, I cannot say I don’t understand his motives.”

The spirit nods. “I suppose I understand, too.” Pitch lets out the breath he’s held. “But if he is the boogeyman—out there haunting children under their beds like in all the stories for the sake of… sick joy? mere spite?—I don’t know if I can really condone it, y’know?”

Pitch grits his teeth. “Is that so?”

“You said yourself that you can’t go against your nature of existing in the darkness.” They shrug and their expression turns to pity. “Perhaps it’s just in his nature to be the way he is.”

A shot of cold pierces Pitch’s core and spreads to his limbs and extremities. His conscious mind pulls slightly to the side of where it’s been for the last few months, echoing with that last sentence. _Of course… of course._ He hears the distant sound of a terrible whinny. Beyond the spirit, Pitch catches the glowing eyes and shifting bodies of many, many nightmares, nickering and tossing their heads, focusing on him in particular. He hardens his heart, bares his teeth, and growls at them. They dissipate, though the echoes of their mockery remain at the edge of his hearing.

The spirit turns around, looking for whatever he saw. But nothing is there anymore.

Neither says anything for the next while. They bask in the awkward tension until the sky begins to brighten.

“I must go,” Pitch whispers.

He stands and makes for the tree. Right before he can throw himself down into his personal abyss, a hand catches him. He stops. The spirit’s other hand joins the one on his wrist, then lightly follows the line of his arm. He turns around. They reach his shoulder, then move straight across to his other. They determinedly avoid his eyes and try to feel their way around his torso without touching him too much. He imagines they’d be bright red if they were in a respectable amount of light, if the heat emanating from their grasp is any indication. But their arms find his shoulders, and then they slowly encircle him. The spirit lifts themself up onto their tiptoes.

“I’m sorry,” they whisper in his ear. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

Pitch stands there, not knowing how to respond to the hug. He settles for blinking in confusion.

“I know you’re leaving for at least the next two weeks… but I hope you come back as soon as you can. You’ve made this life more bearable and intriguing than I thought it could be. And if you ever need to talk, about anything—” He feels them smile with their next words: “My ears are open.”

He can feel their heartbeat on his chest again. They are _far_ too close together. He raises his arms, meaning to create distance again, and then he crosses them around the spirit in return. They sigh in relief in his arms.

“Thank you,” he replies.

They release each other after a moment, and the spirit turns to head back to their lab. They look back before reaching the edge of their clearing.

“Good night, Kozmotis,” they say.

“No, my friend,” he replies, gesturing to the east. “Good morning.”

And when he whispers their name, it is in utterly conflicted reverence.


	5. New Friends

You take to wandering around the forest all day and night in lieu of anyone to distract you.

On the fifth or sixth day, a strangled cry tears through the trees. You’re miles from your base—at least a day and night’s walk—when you hear it. You book it towards the sound, leaping over creek runoff, dried ditches, and fallen trees. Much as you enjoy the nighttime, there’s no doubt that you can move much better in the day.

The screaming gets louder and louder until finally you come across a small clearing around a pond. The harsh noontime sunbeams beat down from a hole punched through the canopy, right onto… onto…

You’re not quite sure what kind of apparition you’ve stumbled across. There’s a silver-black mass of shifting… _mass_ on the edge of the water. It has no discernible limbs, just a tangle of protrusions oozing in and out. The edges of the creature feel their way out in a radius, only to fizzle away if they reach more than a few inches. Every time it screams, patches and chunks of it light up, burning through the largely dark core.

You cover your ears as its cry gains higher pitch and louder volume. It’s horrible to look at, like a nightmare escaped from an eldritch abyss. Just leaving it here where anyone can stumble upon it feels irresponsible, so you string your bow and grab an arrow. And then an idea strikes you. Returning the arrow to the quiver, you summon one tipped with your raw power.

With a fluid motion, you breathe deeply, aim, and release. The arrow flies true. As soon as it strikes the abomination and explodes, the creature silences and its goopy body pools into a smooth circle. You sigh, glad to be done, and very eager to finally have something to run through the loud centrifuges and smear on slides as you scribble meaningless equations and try to ignore your circumstances by balancing them. You draw out a vial and wander over to the pile.

Barely ten feet from it, however, the mass starts expanding, boiling and bubbling. The creature shoots out a fluid limb, and you leap backwards to avoid it, stumbling into the water. It roars again, the sound jerking from key to key. It turns, eye sockets and a mouth looking like a half-melted doll’s head, until it faces and focuses on you.

It pounces.

The water sloshes around your legs, and you can’t move fast enough to avoid impact. It slams into you, enveloping you in its amorphous form. You can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t see, can’t do anything without running into it.

Around you, disparate parts of the creature flash colors, and you realize that you recognize these as reactions from very familiar substances. And once you realize what you’re looking at, you start to feel the nauseating cacophony as all of the different emotions these magic substances induce fight for your body’s attention. You retch, and it disappears into the oozing folds of the creature.

You summon up as much concentration as you can mange with limited air, and pour it all into the tips of your fingers. Your iridescent power shoves through the ooze, blasting away a few patches. Fresh air rushes in and you gasp before the it rolls back into place. The glowing patches drift towards each other.

Once again, you concentrate and attack. The creature doesn’t bounce back quite as fast, its form congealing in places where the glowing mixes with each other. It moans and splashes around, twisting and turning, carrying you along until your feet hit the squishy bank. One more time. Your head is finally free. Under your hands, the creature becomes solid. The creature roars weakly, more like a rasp. It steps forward, and a set of shoulders takes shape where your fingers rake over them. The pulsing glows dim and sink back into the creature.

It reminds you of the sculpting elective you took in college. You had a surprising knack for it, despite still not being anywhere near art major-worthy by the end of the semester. But the delicate control needed to manipulate the clay and intense concentration for the smallest details had gotten through to you. You regret not picking up the hobby later in life, if only to keep your hands and mind busy when not at work.

Sweating, you pull back from the solid creature. The power at your fingertips fades out, and you fall to your knees, panting in an attempt to settle your stomach.

The creature collapses on its side five feet away, trembling and heaving. It looks like a hyena’s body with bat ears attached to it. Its long forelegs bend three different times, ending in a set of fused claws. It tries to stand, but fails and manages to rest on its haunches. It holds itself on its thick, knobby wrists, claws turned back like scythes. It’s hind legs are substantially shorter, creating a sloped angle to its hindquarters. A broad, ribbed chest cuts into a thin stomach, almost matching the angle of the humpback. The creature coughs and swivels its beaked head towards you on its long, thick, snaking neck. It has no eyes, just a plate of bumpy armor rising into a bony crest along its face. Its mouth opens, revealing two sets of tusks and a thick, forked, lashing tongue. It sniffs, snorts, and then tosses its head like a horse. A short, wiry mane shakes in a wave down its body.

The creature shuffles forward on its stomach, ears swiveling. It sniffs you, and then nuzzles into your shoulder, licking your face. You reach up and run a hand along its neck. You can feel the thrum of the different substances still in the creature, but they pulse in sync along new connective tissue—your power. The creature’s short fur shimmers in the daylight. Iridescent, like an oil slick. You look at your hands, a thousand questions running through your mind so fast they blend together into a dull and steady scream.

 _Rest now, questions later,_ you tell yourself and you lay against the creature. It rests its head over you, shifting its body to curve around your own. It begins to snore, one ear still held up and shifting back and forth like a satellite dish. You count the questions like sheep as you rest your eyes. Just for a moment, so you can recover. Just one… moment…

*************

When the spirit wanders out from their base, Pitch breaks in and raids their lab. Then, he moves to their living quarters.

“They have to be hiding something,” he growls. “Something I can use.”

He wishes it hadn’t come to this, but their obtuseness has forced his hand. The crooked floor creaks and bounces as he tears through the papers littering the counters. He rips open the cabinets and empties all the drawers, and it’s when he rummages through the bottom most one that he comes across their wallet. He opens it, pauses, and then takes out a small photograph of the spirit.

They’re smiling with their arm around another human who’s in the midst of holding and kissing them. Their other arm is around a young boy who looks like he’s about to lose control of the stick holding the camera as the blurry form of a dog catches him in the side. Pitch tenses up, resisting the urge to crumple such a wholesome image in his fist. He sneers at their former significant other, and tucks the photo away to take his leave. 

Having listened to them work over the last few weeks, he figures he can try his own experiments. His conversion of the dreamsand into nightmare sand years ago had been a success, so it stands to reason that he can achieve similar results with the other Guardians’ dandruff flakes, especially since this spirit has already done most of the legwork.

It is, perhaps, too much too fast. It had taken centuries to work up the nighmare sand precisely because of the years of frustration between attempts. Pitch had left his newest failure to rot in the sunlight as he recovered his energy elsewhere and summoned a new volunteer.

But coming back to a sight like this… Clearly, the manifestation of their power congealed and corrected the structure of the creature. But was the essence of that power inspiration, as they had conjectured some time ago? Seems a bit fleeting for these results.

The spirit sighs in their sleep. Pitch reaches out and touches the pulse at their neck. It’s quicker than normal, but slowing. He holds there for awhile, feeling the life pulse just under the thin skin of their throat. His gray fingers contrast against it horribly, and he pulls away from them.

Pitch just watches them breathe calmly for awhile, but the itch drives him on. They’re most vulnerable now, dead asleep in the middle of the woods. He feels there hasn’t been enough buildup, but when will he ever get another chance to wade through their mind in the next century?

The creature beside them shivers, and Pitch sees a nightmare has manifested from his shadow. He tries to command it back, but it just looks at him, stands over the spirit, and grinds its teeth.

“Not, yet,” he tells it. The spirit suddenly stirs, but merely shifts and returns to their dream. The nightmare starts dissolving into sand and sinking into their mind. Pitch growls, and grabs its mane just as it dives into the spirit’s sleeping world.

He’s in the middle of what looks like the eye of a hurricane, any escape routes cut off. In the center sits the spirit, blithely gazing around in a dream daze. The nightmare spreads itself around, tossing up a storm. The spirit slowly turns to watch the new chaos, and their fear spikes. And Pitch inhales it greedily.

Pitch sinks into the ground and, using his natural voice, hisses, “You’re walking a thin line, aren’t you?”

The spirit flinches and jumps up. They search for the source of the voice. Pitch releases the photo and carefully controls its flight until it lands at their feet. They lean down to pick it up, but he attaches it to the ground and makes it look like it’s dissolving. They fall to their knees to save it, chanting, “No, no, no, no!”

Instantly, images spring into his mind—long distance trips, missed connections, broken promises. Presumed death. Their guilt grows and grows. The storm walls hasten, dozens of lightning bolts striking from cloud to cloud.

“A loner hiding in the woods and sculpting monsters from thin air? Is that all you have time for nowadays?”

The spirit looks up, the glaze from their eyes fading as their dream turns lucid. Pitch rises up behind them. He grabs their shoulder with a tendril of sand, spins them around, and slams them to the ground. The spirit struggles against the grip, their eyes flickering over his plainly visible form. Pitch summons the photo to his hand.

“Were you even there when your spouse died? Did you bother sparing a minute of your immortality to check up on someone who supposedly meant so much to you?”

The spirit scrunches their face up, failing to resist tearing up. Their voice shakes, “Wh—who are you?”

“You know damn well who I am.” Pitch holds them aloft as he summons a rising pillar of black sand under them. The spirit squirms against the sand's grip, and he feels so invigorated. “Rumors have a habit of getting back to the person they’re about.

“A pleasure to meet you. I am Pitch Black, the King of Nightmares. The Boogeyman. And I have a proposal for you.”

The spirit freezes where they’ve been trying to dislodge the sand. He smiles softly as they meet his gaze; their eyes have become so familiar so quickly. But the spirit starts to look too closely, too long. On instinct, Pitch flings them away off the pillar.

As the spirit falls— _And she disappears_ —they shriek in fright— _with a scream._

Pitch gasps and throws himself down after them. He catches them halfway down the dark spike, creating a new platform to cushion their landing. A nightmare breaks free from the pillar and nearly clips his head. Pitch shakes his head, recovering fast enough to summon sand, twist the spirit’s arm behind their back, and slam them face first into the side of the original pillar. The nightmare circles back around and recedes back into the mass.

“Relax, I just want to talk,” Pitch says, leaning his weight onto the spirit and gagging them. “Look, you’re clearly new to all this, so I can’t imagine anyone’s adequately explained the rules of this kind of existence.

“You are effectively a ghost: invisible and forgotten as humanity moves on without you. If you were once human, your fellows have mourned you for all of a second, and you are nothing more to them than sustenance for molds and worms.

“If you somehow spread awareness of yourself and whatever virtue you champion, then you will gain believers. Believers can see you, touch you, thank you for your existence and any gifts you grant them. As their belief in you grows and spreads, the more powerful you become. The more alive you feel. Do you understand now? Good. Here’s the catch.”

He swings them around, wrapping more tendrils around them to let them lean just a bit too far over the edge without actually dropping. They shiver as the vertigo kicks in; he shivers as they panic.

“Should a significant amount of people stop believing, you will become weak. Should _all_ belief in you fade… so will you. Knowing this, I hope you understand why a certain contingent of spirits who hog all of the glory and belief has ruffled more than a few feathers. They’re so willing to put in the effort to keep _themselves_ stuffed with belief so long as the ‘lesser’ spirits are kept in their place.”

He holds the photo in front of their face. “I should add that these spirits are rather keen on moral purity, so if you have anything regretful in your past—such as hurting children’s feelings—it’ll be more than enough reason for them to let you go by the wayside.

“So here’s the deal: you help me, and I will ensure you safety, power, and more than enough belief to sustain you forever. What say you?”

He releases their mouth. They cough and sputter, _“Go fuck yourself!”_

“I’m afraid I’m not very good at that. I’m open to any help, though.” He winces as he says it, but moves on. “My offer will remain open so long as you need to think it over. Spread the word! Tell your friends… if you even have any left.”

Pitch flings them off the pillar yet again, into an abyss of black sand. As they disappear screaming, a shiver runs up his spine. A nightmare circles him again. He walks from the dream world to his lair, and grabs at it. His fingers slide through the sand, and the horse dissipates back into the shadows at his feet. Pitch heaves out a deep sigh, and ticks down the days until Kozmotis can return.


	6. The Guardians of Childhood

As the dark abyss swallows you whole, you jolt upright where you had laid down. You pant for a moment, cold sweat running down your face. Looking around, you realize you’re still bathed in darkness, and the panic starts to rise again. Then, there’s a splash nearby. You see the creature— _your_ creature?—wading in the pond, head dipped to drink. It glows under the light of the nearly full moon.

“Wait…” You find the north star and reorient yourself. The moon is nearly round, but it’s in a waning phase now; you’ve missed the peak. “How long was I asleep?”

A small bleat comes from the creature as it approaches you. It shakes the water off its body and bows in front of you to stretch. You pet it again, and it vibrates as it leans into the touch.

“Been awhile since Hei Bai, hasn’t it?” you mutter, thinking of that black and white dog. The same dog as in the photo from your wallet.

The photo.

In an instant, you turn and start running towards your base, stumbling through the night. Loping thumps get louder behind you, and suddenly you’re off your feet and flipping onto the back of the creature. You just manage to get a grip on its mane as it shimmies up the nearest tree. At the top, it pauses, swivels its head and ears, and then turns to you.

“I don’t know about this…” But you turn it to face the right direction, and give it a gentle nudge with your heels. “… Go?"

The creature launches itself straight up into the air about fifty feet. You wrap your arms around its neck to stop from falling, and you scream into the wind. At the top of its jump, the creature spreads open its limbs, and a flap of skin stretches out and catches the wind. The two of you glide over the tops of the forest, putting miles behind you in an instant. When you descend, you’re only a mile or so out from the lab. Ten minutes later, you’re in the clearing.

The doors are flung open. There’s a glow in the windows of your home, and another coming from the lab. Several papers litter the area, some of them blown off the porch and soaking in the dew. You tremble. The creature turns and nuzzles your arm, and then takes off toward the treehouse. It scrambles up to the porch, which creaks threateningly under its weight.

“What the—?”

You hear a twangy, accented voice inside. But before you can get a glimpse of whoever’s there, the creature snarls and tries to shove its way through the door.

“Jeez’n crikey! Get outta here!”

You slide off the creature, wrap your hands around its neck, and tug.

“Stop!”

The creature swings one ear your way, but keeps trying to barge in.

“Yeah, okay, stop _this!_ ” the voice says.

There’s a dull thud and the creature flinches, letting out a yelp. Rage replaces all your panic, and you vault over the creature through the doorway. You draw an arrow as you land inside.

“I said stop!” you shout, training your sights on the figure in front of you. A six-foot tall rabbit—seven-and-a-half with the ears—stands two yards away, a boomerang raised above his head. At your cry, the creature stops struggling to get in, settling for growling in the doorway. The rabbit is unswayed.

“Who the heck are you?” he demands.

“The owner of this house!” You point. “And that lab!”

“Bunny! Bunny look what I fou—oh my gosh!” A woman’s voice calls up, and the creature swiftly retracts its head to snarl at something else. She replies, “Yah!”

“No!” You rush out the door in time to find yourself in the path of a punch. It catches your cheekbone and for a second you see nothing but flashes of color, and then the stars as you find yourself looking up at the sky.

A woman hovers above you, hands over her mouth in shock. She doesn’t look long, however, as the creature— _It needs a name, a proper name,_ you vaguely think in your confusion—lunges at her, snapping its jaws.

“Tooth, watch out!” the rabbit yells. He grunts. There’s another thud and another yelp.

“Stop,” you murmur. You haul yourself to your knees and lean on the creature. “Stop!”

None of them are listening. They’re shouting over each other, louder and louder. The moonlight brightens painfully. Dazed and clinging to the creature’s mane, fighting through the most physical pain you’ve experienced in a decade, something comes to your mind. There’s a tingle at your fingertips, and you can see your power hovering on both hands.

“Kidra! Heel!” you yell, touching the creature, your other hand coming up to protect yourself.

Everything goes silent. You open your eyes, and the creature—Kidra—is sitting, its head retracted closer to its chest. It’s still growling, its ears still focusing all around, but it’s stopped attacking. You let out a breath of relief. The two intruders—spirits, you assume, given one’s flying and the other’s a giant rabbit—are next to each other, looking on curiously. You drag yourself back to standing, wincing as pain shoots through the side of your head. That’ll bruise by morning.

“Oh! You’re one of us,” the woman says. She smiles and takes her hand off the swords at her hip.

“’Course they are. They’re a grown-up who can see us, when does that ever happen normally?” the rabbit retorts. His boomerang is still in his hand, and his fingers twitch, ready for anything.

“Well… every _once_ in awhile—”

“Yeah, ‘bout once every _century_ or two, but that’s it.”

“Who are you?” you ask. They swing their attention back to you. “And what are you doing in my home?”

“Oh, this is your place?” she asks. You nod. She darts her eyes around the skewed construction. “It’s very, uhm… unique!”

“Pardon my friend here,” the rabbit says. He offers his free paw. “Name’s E. Aster Bunnymund.”

“E. Aster Bunnymund…” You take his paw and roll the name around in your head. He glances back at his friend and smirks. “E. Aster… Easter… Bunn—? That’s a little on the nose, huh?”

The rabbit’s smile doesn’t falter, but the gleam in his eyes fades. “It might be… if I weren’t the one and only Easter Bunny, and that wasn’t literally my given name.” His grip on your hand gets a little tighter, and his smile just a little more stiff. “Just ‘Bunny’ is fine, though.”

You feel the heat rising to your face as you realize that he wasn’t just _any_ spirit, he’s one of the more iconic characters from your childhood. Real, and raiding your house.

You both drop the handshake, and there’s a few seconds of silence. Just as you open your mouth to say something, the woman flutters up to you and takes your hand in hers.

“It’s so nice to meet you! I’m Toothiana… the Tooth Fairy!” Her eyes flick down to your mouth. Self-conscious, you immediately close it, and she returns her bright, eager gaze to your eyes. She flits around like a hummingbird, and you quickly take in all the feathers covering her body. Colorful, iridescent feathers.

“Wait…” you gasp. You focus on her hand in yours, where the feathers at her wrist glimmer in the moonlight. “Wait, are you where those feathers come from?”

“Oh, right!”

Toothiana darts back to your lab. Just as quickly, she comes back with an armful of the samples you’ve collected. She dumps them onto the porch despite your protest. Bunny picks up a vial with colored eggshells and turns it over in his hand, mouthing a silent “What in the—?”

Tooth says, “Why do you have all of this?”

“I found it around,” you say.

“Ok, but why did ya keep ‘em?” Bunny asks.

“I—Does it matter?”

“It’s a little creepy keeping parts of people in bottles, mate,” he replies. “Or their creations for that matter.”

You shrug, stooping to pick up the samples. “They’re magical substances. I’ve been studying them.”

“What for?”

“Because I can!” You try to snatch the vial from him, but he swerves out of the way. “You know, you haven’t told me why you’re here invading my house. I’d like some answers, too.”

The Easter Bunny points up to the sky. “Manny told us the boogeyman was stalking around here and causing trouble.”

“Pitch Black?” you whisper. The two spirits notice and suddenly become more interested. Tooth settles onto the porch, wings folding onto her back.

“You’ve met him?” she asks, reaching out a hand to your shoulder.

“We crossed paths recently.” Kidra lays their head on your shoulder and shifts a foreleg around your body.

“Where was he?” Bunny demands at the same time Tooth asks, “How long have you been a spirit?”

You take a deep breath and explain. How new you are, how you thought you were alone, how you came across the abomination miles away, transformed it, fell asleep and met Pitch. The two listen intently to your story, thankfully stopping themselves from interrupting a few times.

“So he’s the first spirit you met, huh?” Toothiana winces. “I’m so sorry. I can assure you, we’re not all like that.”

“Well, actually, the first one I met is a local forest spirit.” Before they can ask further questions, you ask something that’s been on your mind from the instant they introduced themselves. “So, if you’re the Easter Bunny, and you’re the Tooth Fairy—”

“Here it comes…” Bunny mutters. Toothiana jabs him in the gut with her elbow.

“Does… does Santa Claus round out the trio, or something like that?”

“Something like that,” the say simultaneously. Toothiana starts hovering again.

“Me, Bunny, Santa Claus—North is his actual name—” She nods sympathetically as you rub your forehead at the name. “—We’re members of a group called the Guardians. We watch over children to make sure they grow up happy and healthy.”

“And out of the claws of spirits like Pitch,” Bunny adds, spitting after he says the name.

“So, the three of you—”

“Six!” Tooth says. “The Sandman, Jack Frost, and Mother Goose are also Guardians!”

“And of course, Manny,” Bunny says, motioning up at the sky again. You look up, trying to see the spirit he’s pointing at, but there’s nothing but the stars and moon. You look back to him and shrug. He scoffs. “The Man In The Moon.”

You’d of course heard of the Man In The Moon when you were young. He was a staple of the Mother Goose tales and rhymes, and the concept was briefly mentioned in your one astronomy class and every planetarium show you'd been to. But try as you might, you’ve never really been able to stitch together the lunar seas into anything that resembles a face. Even now, it just looks like a shadowy, sliver rock in space.

“You mean Selene?” you ask, uneasy. The fairy looks confused and concerned, but the rabbit looks downright offended.

“No. I mean the bloody Man In The bloody Moon. He’s right there!”

But you just shake your head. His grip tightens on the boomerang he’s refused to sheath this whole conversation, and his ears twitch rapidly. Kidra growls and stands, though it doesn’t move from behind you. Toothiana swoops between you and Bunny, holding her arms out.

“Hang on now, guys! I’m sure there’s an explanation for this.” She leans over to Bunny and whispers, “Be nice! They’re new and confused.”

“I’m not helpless!” you say. “I’ve just never been able to see the face in the moon. Not even as a kid. I believe you that he exists!” you add, seeing his grip tighten further. “I don’t think I have a choice to _not_ believe it seeing as how there’s all this magic around now.” You summon a bit of power to your fingertips and quickly shake it away. “But I can see and feel Selene up there. Nothing and no one else.”

The two spirits exchange a look, but don’t argue. Bunny takes a deep breath and finally puts away his boomerang. He leans over and touches the porch railing. A twig sprouts from it, followed by an exotic flower that you recognize as only appearing sporadically in the springtime. He plucks the petals one by one and hands all five to you.

“If you see Pitch again, hold one of these in your hand and yell for help. I’ll come runnin’ quick as a bunny.” He winks, then frowns. “But you only get these! So if you run out cause you were... puttin’ chemicals on 'em, you’re outta luck.”

He leaps off the porch onto the ground where he thumps his foot twice. A hole materializes there, and he motions for Toothiana. She turns back to you one more time, a serious look on her face.

“Ignore his grumpiness. He’s really a good person. Just kind of a hard egg to crack. And _please_ don’t hesitate to call us if you see Pitch.” She smiles kindly. “Oh! I can send a few of my fairies to check up on you! I’m sure they’d like a new friend.”

She flutters down to the ground as you yell, “Wait, you have more fairies?”

“How do you think I collect teeth all over the world every night?”

“I thought you were just… fast. Like how Santa—or North?—delivers toys in one night.”

“He only does that cause he’s a show-off,” Bunny says. He gives you a salute and dives into the hole.

Tooth nods and yells, “It was nice to meet you!” before she zooms in.

The ground closes, and the only evidence of it left is another flower that wilts just as quickly. Kidra finally walks around you and wriggles their way through the narrow door frame to curl up all ten feet of their length in the middle of the floor.

You head over to your lab and start tidying up. You stuff all the petals in a bottle before reconsidering and taking one out. It goes into a different vial, right next to your other samples. Four should be enough to keep you out of trouble.

You spend the next few days cleaning up your lab and home, as well as training Kidra and getting used to their presence. The moon continues to wane. About a week and a half later, you’re sitting at your lab desk, transcribing notes, when you hear something step across your clearing. And then you hear a familiar voice softly call your name.

You crack open the door, and see Kozmotis’s eyes shining mischievously as he looks up towards your house. You watch him for a moment. His eyes narrow and he sways where he stands. Finally, he calls your name again.

“You’re not grounded again, are you?”

“Not tonight,” you reply, swinging the door open all the way. He slips backwards into the deeper shadows, eyes wide. You giggle and tell Kidra to stay put as you close the lab door. You walk up to his glowing eyes and reach out a hand. “Are you?”

He regards it a moment before saying, “That couldn’t stop me.” He slips his hand in yours and you lead him towards the woods for a walk under Selene’s watchful eye.


	7. A Nurtured Nature

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *toots party horn* thanks to the >100 of you new and returning friends out here reading my self-indulgent mess
> 
> speaking of which, i upped the rating and added some tags for the future

You and Kozmotis fall into a routine over the next few months. Every two to three weeks, he’s coming or going depending on the moon. Every time he goes, you miss his company a little bit more. But once he reappears, you spend as much time with him as possible. Most nights end up with the two of you sitting around as you fix more arrows and babble on about your hypotheses.

“I think it’s more a case of my power interacting with other magical items. But, I’m still stumped on how to really isolate the chemical properties,” you say one night. “I’m still not even sure I could find out if they were made of atoms and elements if I tried, since, well, they're magical. So I’m having to go from the top-down, assuming there is a bottom to reach. I’m not exactly sure how to say it…”

“Try me,” he replies.

You get the idea he doesn’t fully understand what you’re talking about. As an ancient forest spirit, he has no need for science, let alone chemistry, but he does seem to pay attention whenever you go off on a ramble. Whenever you look up at him to check if he’s still listening, his glowing eyes are always fixed on you, and you always falter. More often than not, he’ll lean over and ask you to continue.

You find yourself falling towards a conclusion that you hated yourself for reaching the first time, when you were alive. Even now, you wish you hadn’t wasted your spouse’s time with your greedy cowardice. You just couldn’t bring yourself to change your nature, even if it meant quashing theirs. But even if you failed your partner in life, even if you feel they were better off after you disappeared, you find it hard to completely regret starting a family with them. An image of them flickers in your mind—their understanding eyes, their gentle hands on yours, their voice as they try to lead you into a personal revelation that even your professional therapist couldn’t goad you into.

Pitch was right: you hadn’t been there when they eventually died. You’re not even sure when it happened or where they’re buried. Or if your son is still alive, for that matter.

You loved them, but they were too good for you. And as you think of Kozmotis’ burning eyes, his firm touch, his commanding presence, you almost want to vomit at the idea that they wasted their time with you if you’re so easily led away from thinking about them. And yet, you continue to seek him out night after night.

Around the height of summer—when not even the sea breeze can stave off the rampant humidity—you and Kidra return to your lab after a night roaming the city and walking the woods with Kozmotis. But something is wrong. The treehouse is untouched, but as the sun rises higher and higher, you and get a growing sense of unease.

You head outside to take another look around, Kidra at your heels. They’ve been twitchy all day, but as you look around your clearing, you come to the conclusion that its just your old anxiety having a bad day. Suddenly, Kidra whips around and starts growling.

You start to turn as familiar tendrils of black sand shoot up, wrap around your forearms and knock your weapon from you.

“Kidra!” you yell, then whistle a command.

They immediately turn and swipe at one of the tendrils. It collapses, and you try to wrench your other arm free. Another tendril shoots up around your leg and makes your knee buckle. You scream in frustration and pain. The tendril shivers and immediately unwinds from you before re-tightening just around your ankle. Kidra bellows and rushes over to help, only to have their ears yanked back. They yelp and struggle to free themself.

More tendrils shoot up and surround you. Reaching back to your quiver, you summon three arrows and stab them each into the ones around your leg and arm. They explode into smoke, and the tendrils retract, one fizzling away as it gets hit by a golden sand mixture. With no time to think, you summon a few more arrows and stab the ones reaching towards you, clearing a way to your lab.

You haul open the door, dash inside, and frantically search your wall of samples for the bottle of petals. It’s been shoved to the back of the shelf, collecting dust as the months have moved on. The other vial with the single petal is doing the same somewhere near your machines, as you've procrastinated really looking into it.

Just as you twist off the cap and grab one, many more tendrils of sand shoot around you and spiral up your arm, stopping you from calling for help. They drag you outside. The sand twists your arms around your back, shoves you onto your knees, and gags you as you try to whistle another command to Kidra.

“And just what in the world is this?” comes the light, mocking voice.

Pitch Black materializes from the noontime shadow directly under your house, slowly stalking into the clearing with his head held high. The sand brings him the petal and he turns it over in his hand. He encases it in a small sand sphere.

“I see. So the Guardians have deemed you important enough for them to visit, have they?” He looks at you, then chuckles. “Or perhaps they think you’ll tattle on me and they’ll finally be able to beat me back. I suppose they aren’t wrong. But isn’t that typical of them to get others to do the heavy lifting for them and give nothing in return?”

He dismisses the gag. You gasp, cough, and spit out a few grains of sand.

“What do you want now?” you ask, trying to manage your heart rate as you struggle against the bindings. They tremble and slip.

“An answer is all. I told you last time my offer was open as long as you needed to think it over.” He makes an exaggerated disappointed face “But you kept me waiting for so long!”

He takes a deep breath and the bindings re-tighten, making you grunt in pain. Kidra lunges from where they’re still trapped, trying to bite at Pitch. Their large, delicate ears are still caught, so they only succeed at twisting and kicking, but they surprise him enough that he loses concentration and the sand ropes fall again.

“Hmm... you okay over there?” you call out, trying to shift the bindings even looser. They squeeze even tighter in reply.

“Just relax and give me your answer,” Pitch says through grit teeth, a sheen of sweat visible on his flushed face and shaking hands.

You tilt your head. “Not doing so hot out here in the sun?”

“I want your answer!” Pitch shouts, panting. “Will you ally with me against the overreach of the so-called ‘Guardians?’ So that we may have what they hoard?”

“Ask me nicely next time.”

You focus and summon up the largest burst of power you can manage. It explodes out in a sphere, freeing you. It travels up the tendrils until it hits Pitch and he’s encompassed in a swirl of oily iridescence. He flies backwards into one of the support posts for the treehouse with a loud crack. He crumples to the ground for a moment before hauling himself up onto his hands and knees, panting.

But the sand surrounding you doesn’t disappear. It’s weak compared to the massive tower in your nightmare, but the tendrils don’t fizzle and fade away when Pitch is incapacitated. As your power loops around them, they diminish at first but then slowly start pulsing, twisting, bulging, and wrapping around themselves. Empty, glowing eyes open in the shadowy tendrils. And then they separate into a mass of tiny, almost formless creatures.

“Oh…” Pitch struggles to his feet. “Well there’s a sight for sore eyes.”

The creatures rush you. You dive over to where your bow had dropped and retrieve it as the first wave of the creatures reaches you. You smack a few away with it. They shatter into shadows upon impact, but there’s just so many of them. A bellow rips through the clearing as Kidra struggles free and steamrolls the pack immediately in front of you. You reach for your arrows as soon as you have room, loading one and setting the creatures in your sights.

“Hold on now!” Pitch yells.

He stumbles across the clearing towards one mass of creatures. At the same time he reaches it, you let loose. For a moment, everything is nearly silent, and then suddenly, a wave of energy erupts through the clearing, crumbling the support beam Pitch had been thrown into. Half the porch slides down, taking a portion of the house wall with it. You and Kidra are thrown off your feet and skid a few yards back.

From the center of the clearing, a wide column of black ascends one hundred feet into the air. A chill runs down your spine as the loud, malicious laughter of Pitch Black resonates through the trees. You look up in time to see swirls of darkness writhing at you, and once again they drag you off.

As soon as you’re submerged in the column, panic overtakes rational thought. You can’t breathe. Pressure squeezes you from all sides. You try to flail as you’re dragged up and up. Thousands of glowing eyes and wide, toothy smiles jeer as you pass, echoing Pitch’s laughter in horrible imitations of whispers. Finally, you’re dragged out the top, torso and legs encased in a cocoon of sand. Below you, the surface pulsates with the forms of the new creatures and the dark horses. In the center is Pitch, still shaking, panting, and wincing in the sunlight, but he’s grinning wider than ever. He drops you down right in front of him, and his pupils are so blown out that you can’t see his irises.

“I don’t know what you just did,” he purrs. He moves behind you, and you cannot turn to see him. “But I now have my fearlings back. After all these years…” Between panicked breaths and all of your mistakes flashing in your mind, you find something familiar about the way he says that. “And I also have ten thousand new ideas for seeding fear throughout the world. Thank you for that.”

There’s a pause, and then he lightly drags a long forefinger down the side of your face. You try to lean away from the touch, but you’re trapped. It trails over your cheek and down your neck just above your collarbone. Something slips into the collar of your hood. Behind you, you can barely hear him say:

“If this is what you can do, I should just… keep you.”

You snap. A blast of your power shoots from your hand through the cocoon. The sand dissipates in the spot, then recovers quickly as it reaches hungrily for the energy. But as soon as your arm is free again, you summon the last of your special arrows and jab it up and over behind you.

“Augh!”

It lodges into Pitch and explodes. His screams continue, and you find yourself falling. Through the column, past the eyes and teeth, down, down, down. As you fall, the column starts to dissolve. Just as the ground is about to break your fall, Kidra slides under you, cushioning the worst of it. The wind still gets knocked right out of you, and you gasp for air as you’re draped over Kidra.

Above you, Pitch screams in agony, dropping lower and lower out of the sky on a diminishing clot of black sand. Finally, he falls close enough for you to see that where your arrow stabbed him, a golden burn or rash spreads over his shoulder and up his neck. He spares one more glance your way before he and the sand disappear over the forest.

You lay there for awhile. You’re not sure how long, but the shadows are getting too long for your comfort. Slowly, you start working out the stiffness from your back and sit up. You lean on Kidra and limp back to the lab, where you rifle through your samples again until you reach the petal bottle. As you do, the one Pitch had stolen flutters from your collar. However, it’s color has changed to black, and it now shimmers with a crystal-like sheen. You toss it into a drawer to look at or burn later. In the meantime, you grab a fresh petal out of the bottle, clench it in your fist, and whisper, “Help.”

*************

Safe in the darkness of his realm, as the fearlings and nightmares reconvene, Pitch examines what the hell the spirit did to him. He stretches his neck in front of a cracked mirror, lightly running his finger over the patch there. It hurts like a burn or bruise. Where the magic has spread—across his shoulder to just under the curve of his jaw—the skin has faded into a warm, pinkish color. The puncture wound itself, just above his collarbone, still glows from the magic. Golden magic derived from the Sandman’s sand. Pitch is already exhausted from being so active in the daytime, and the dreamsand in his system only exacerbates that. He conjures a taller collar to hide the discoloration until it heals and then turns to his new armies.

The fearlings harass the nightmares, which stomp and bite in reply. Pitch captures their attention with single snap of his fingers. They all quiet down and turn their glowing eyes onto him, highly anticipating his instruction. Pitch stands up straighter. This is where he belongs: a general in command of his loyal, attentive armies.

“What has happened today is mysterious, but it’s unwise to mistrust any triumph we can take right now. All of us felt it: felt the new ideas and plans rush through our consciousnesses from the spirit’s power. The focus, the direction, the—” He realizes something. “—creativity… But we are still so few in numbers. So, we know what we must do.”

The small legion cackles and cheers. Some of the fearlings swing themselves on to nightmares, ready for action. Pitch holds his hand up to quell them the least bit.

“We shall focus on the southern hemisphere until Halloween. By then, we should make enough gains to challenge the Guardians on their own turf. Not to mention the fact that the North Pole should be fairly preoccupied by that time, leaving reinforcements scarce and distracted.

“Now go.”

The command is barely out of his mouth when they all start moving. From his vantage point, they look like a mass of glittery ants running in every direction at once. Scattering at _his_ word.

“Avoid Oceania as much as possible. We want to draw as little attention to our efforts as we can in the short time we have to work.” He grins, summoning shadows around himself. “Happy hunting…”

He transports himself out of his realm and into the woods near the spirit’s home. His forces have their instructions; they’ll follow them to the letter. In the meantime…

His spirit friend had taken quite the fall. Even though he dipped down to check, the pain was just too much, it was far too bright out, and he had to leave before he was completely sure they’d survived. They looked conscious enough, but it’s already been hours; the moon is rising in the dark sky. He moves through the trees toward the clearing, but upon coming to the treeline, he stops dead in his tracks. The spirit is there. They are alive. And they’re being tended to by Guardians: the Easter Bunny and the Sandman.

Pitch slips behind the nearest tree to keep from being caught. He peeks around the side, and strains his ears to listen to their conversation.

“No, no, it’s not as simple as just throwing the sand and feathers together. That just produces a heterogeneous mixture. It’s like being exposed to both substances independently… but at the same time.” His spirit friend clutches a sparkling, golden blanket around them as they stiffly gesture and speak. The Sandman tentatively pats the snout of the spirit’s creature, which lays on its side, tongue lolling, as a golden halo swirls around its head. “I’ve found that to really amplify the feelings they invoke, I have to add a certain amount of my power to the mix.”

The spirit pauses, leaning closer to Sandy. They shake their head at whatever he says.

“My power has an effect on its own, but it doesn’t seem to do much except temporarily inspire people. It needs to interact with other things to be more permanent.”

“And that’s what happened for Pitch to get his fearlings back?” the rabbit asks. He scans the area, flipping his weapons in his hands.

“I think so. I refined and distilled the substances before I put them in the arrowheads, but I don’t think it’s necessary to complete a reaction. Especially since all I was working with was my raw power and his black sand.” They gaze into the distance, beyond either of the Guardians. “A _lot_ of black sand…”

Pitch’s breath catches in his chest. The plan had just been to feed a little, perhaps get an answer either way. _They didn’t say ‘no,’_ a part of him whispers, the same part that suggested he merely keep them around for their magic. He has to admit, that’s not the least tempting of thoughts. Very practical, considering the circumstances.

But he shakes off that train of thought, and looks up at the spirit in time to see them staring right at him. Their eyes are wide and glimmering, and their expression lightens. He nods to them. A second later, they incline their head slightly in return. Pitch smiles.

Sandy notices their gaze, however. He spins around, conjuring his golden whips and searching the treeline. Bunny starts slowly making his way over.

“It’s nothing! Just a trick of the light,” the spirit cries. They try to stand, but flinch and end up sitting back down just as quick.

Bunny waves them off, still advancing. “No need to be scared, mate. We’ll get him where it hurts most.”

Pitch slinks back around the tree. He shrinks into the shadows, reappearing in a nearby treetop. The rabbit enters the woods, and Pitch winds up, ready to either kill him or defend himself. And then Bunny starts muttering, barely loud enough for the sound to travel up to Pitch’s ears.

“If you’re around here, we’ll find ya, and we’ll get ya. Don’t think we’ve forgotten ‘bout what you tried with Frost all those years ago. You takin’ a powerful liking to a spirit is sign number one that we’ve got to put you back in your place.”

After a few minutes hunting for and threatening Pitch, Bunny lowers his weapons and exits the trees. Pitch waits a few more minutes to make sure neither Guardian comes back. He peeks back in time to see his spirit moving into their lab.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll carry the petals on me in case I run into him again.”

Bunny sighs. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but…” He grimaces. “If you’d like, we can take ya to the North Pole. You’d be more than safe there.”

“That’s very kind, but, I—you said the North Pole?”

“Yup. Or any of our bases, really. But there’s a lot more people to watch ya at the Pole.”

The spirit goes quiet for a moment. Pitch tries to catch their eyes again. He’s not sure if he’d ever see them again if they went into the Guardians’ custody. Or worse: the Moon would induct them into the club and he’d have lost yet another potential ally to them. He summons a nightmare to his side and instructs it to distract them.

The nightmare swirls over to another edge of the clearing and steps into the spare light of the waning crescent moon. It whinnies and rears. The Guardians immediately start after it, and for a moment it looks like everything is in the clear. But halfway out of the clearing, the damned rabbit pauses, taps his foot, and three giant stone egg statues pop out of the holes.

“They’ll keep an eye on ya!” Bunny says before disappearing behind the Sandman.

The statues barricade the spirit into their well-lit lab. They look out for him again and wave weakly before going inside.

It’s another week until he can get near them again. If it’s not egg statues, it’s fairies or dreamsand creations standing guard. Pitch busies himself gathering the nightmares of children in the meantime, trying to maintain the momentum of the initial burst of creativity. Perhaps even trying to be seen by the Guardians in places far from the spirit. But finally, on the night of the new moon, the spirit loses their babysitters in the dark. Once they find him, they throw their arms around his neck. Pitch bites back the pain that still hasn’t faded, and holds them in return.

“It’s been awhile,” they whisper close to his ear.

He nods, and then says, “Thank you for not ratting me out to them.”

The spirit releases him, though keep their hands on his arms. They shrug. “They had already overstayed their welcome after I told them about Pitch.” They shiver. “They’re very single-minded about him. Not that I don’t understand, but it got a little annoying after they tried to take me to the Pole. Away from my lab. Which I notice they’re keen on seeing.”

“The Guardians’ strongholds are indeed some of the most well-fortified places on Earth,” Pitch says. “You could be on friendly terms with them, and if they did not want you to come in, you couldn’t.” He raises a hand to their face. “But I’d hate to see you disappear behind those walls.”

Their face heats up and they avoid eye contact. Pitch suddenly realizes how easy it truly would be to just keep them for himself. They’re alone in the dark in the arms of an invisible friend. Not even their creature is nearby, probably commanded to guard the lab. He could simply make them disappear to his own fortress, harvest their power for his own gains, and no one would be the wiser for a long time.

_She sighs, content in his arms. He lifts her chin up so that he can see the glimmer in her eyes that only exists for him. His heart beats faster._

The fear that has returned to him over the last few weeks has empowered him greatly. The parts of his nature that became obscured after the Guardians defeated him in the Dark Ages, after that Easter—they have come back and reminded him why his is the way he is.

The spirit finally meets his gaze again. They tremble in his arms, and he can feel their heartbeat on his chest. They are _so close_ together.

His heart beats faster.

He is the embodiment of spite and fear. He is selfish and rotten to the core. He is irredeemable by all given accounts, and that is why he is so powerful.

His heart beats faster.

 _If selfishness is in my nature,_ he thinks, gently cupping their chin in his fingers. _Then why bother fighting against the inevitable?_

There’s one last moment’s pause, and then he brings his lips to theirs, holding them close around their waist. For a second, the spirit freezes in his grasp, and their anxiety spikes. Pitch holds them closer, just in case this is the last chance for him to do so. But his spirit relaxes and leans further into the kiss, wrapping their hands around his head and neck, forcing him even closer.

They both remain there for a long moment, until the first, pre-dawn birdsong finds them. Only then does he reluctantly release them, pausing only to lift their face up to his one more time and whisper their name.

“Good morning,” he murmurs against their lips.

“Good night, Kozmotis,” they reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo this gets a little spicy next chapter, so please review the tags.


	8. Chain Reactions

The summer technically turns to fall, though you’re too far south for the weather to change much. You spend about half the time repairing what damage to your home that you can, getting help from Kozmotis at night. The results are still slapshod, but at least it's a consistent aesthetic. Neither of you really understand construction, but you do start understand each other a lot better. Feeling his lips on yours never becomes less thrilling. 

Even the days become more exciting, and you find yourself enjoying another daytime excursion into the city. You’ve left your cloak and armor at your base so you can truly take in the less-humid air, but true to your word to Bunny, you’re still carrying the petals in your satchel.

You hitch a ride on a bus and make it out to the beach. Tourist season ended a few weeks ago, but humans still pack the sand. Cheers and shrieks of delight cut through the steady sound of breaking waves. Children and adults alike splash in and out of the sea foam and soak in the harsh rays of the sun.

_Your partner watches as your five-year-old son screams when he charges toward the water. Both of you laugh as a small wave has him shrieking and running back up the shore to your blankets. You wrap your arms around him and tell him its all right, its just water. He takes a moment to calm down, takes a bite of a hot dog, and then takes back off to the water, screaming again. This time, he’s armed with a shovel. Your spouse laughs and takes your hand._

_“Look at what we’ve created,” they say. “A monster one moment, a scaredy-cat the next.”_

_“Yeah,” you agree. You track their smile, trying to make sure it’s genuine. They look at you, eyes soft and lips parted. Seems legit for the moment. You control your breathing and lean against them. “We can leave here anytime you want.”_

_“You’ve wanted to come out here for weeks,” they reply firmly. “So we’re here.”_

_“Is this H2O, too? Like tap water!” your son screams. Seawater leaks out of his cupped hands._

_“Got it in one!” you yell back. He smiles, then tosses the water into the air and punches it, complete with sound effect. You turn back to your spouse. “You just got out of the hospital—”_

_They lean over and kiss you to make you shush. It’s a very effective tactic, so they do it often. As you part, they shake their head and whisper, “I don’t blame you.”_

_You reply, “It was my fault.”_

_They say again, “I. Don’t. Blame. You.”_

You hear your name. You shake your head to free your thoughts and look around. By your waist is the same child from months ago: from the sleepover and the food festival. She waves up at you.

“Hi!”

“Hi,” you reply, squatting so that you’re at eye level with her. “You’re… Ali—Eli—”

“Alisah.” She leans in and cups her mouth to whisper. You lean over. “Are you one of the Guardians?”

“Ah... ha. No, I’m afraid not.” Her face falls, and you stammer, “I—It’s just—You’re the only one who believes in me. You need a loooot of believers to become a Guardian.”

“Grampa believes in you!” she cries. You glance around quickly to make sure no one heard. An adult on a towel ten feet away looks over their book for a second, but doesn’t get up. Alisah looks extremely cross.

You plop yourself on the ground. “How… how do you and your grampa even know who I am?”

Alisah helps herself to sitting in your lap. She sits up on her knees, and you have to hold back a grunt of pain as they dig into your gut and side. She cups her hands again and whispers in your ear.

“He tells me the story all the time. You’re my grampa’s parent that died but then became a spirit to save him.”

You stop breathing for a moment. You quickly but gently pull Alisah back and really study her face. You feel so stupid. It’s a little vague, but the outline of your son’s face is in her features. Your hand covers your trembling mouth, and your eyes fill with tears.

“Are you okay?” Alisah asks. She uses a sandy palm to wipe your face.

You wrap your arms around your great-granddaughter and squeeze tight. She hugs you in return. Sniffing, you run a hand over her damp hair. You tilt her head and give her a kiss on the forehead. She angrily wipes it away, though you can see her failing to hide a smile.

“Wow…” you say, just looking at her. “What are the odds we’d run into each other here?”

She beams. “I used my birthday wish yesterday to wish to see you again.”

The tears start streaming down your face. “How old are you?”

“Eight!”

You just manage to stop yourself from swearing, swapping for a plain old “Wow” as you embrace her again. A whole great-granddaughter. Who can see you and believes in your existence. You sit there for awhile with Alisah, trying to keep yourself from breaking down completely. Finally, she starts to slide out of your arms.

“Wait! Alisah!” She turns back around. “What’s your grampa’s address?”

“Hmm…” She rocks back and forth on her heels, digging herself slightly farther into the dirt each time. “I dunno if I should tell you.”

“I… I _am_ your great-grandparent.”

She still looks skeptical. “If you were a Guardian like the Sandman, maybe I could tell you.”

Part of you wants to scream and the other is very impressed at her stranger danger skills.

“No, I understand. Very good not to let everyone know.”

Alisah smiles wide, and you notice that one of her two front teeth is gone. There’s the passing thought of whether Toothiana collected that one recently, but for the most part, you just sit on the beach and watch Alisah alternate between stomping around in the water, building a sandcastle, and sitting next to you to tell you about whatever crosses her mind.

“My friend Alex who you helped save from the boogeyman, too, they’re writing a book! About a rabbit who meets a dragon but then the rabbit _dies_ and then the rabbit’s child has to go on an adventure to get their parent’s armor and magic sword back because the dragon put them in different places to try and stop the prophecy from coming true that said a rabbit would kill them and save the kingdom.” Alisah pauses to catch her breath. “Alex said they got the idea the night you first saw me which means you helped them, too. They’ve got _ten pages_ already!”

Your mind whirls even faster. “Well, how ‘bout that,” you muster.

For the first time in a long, long while, you’re sad to see the sunset. As Alisha's parents collect her to go home, you examine the both of them, hoping to see similar signs of your son in either of them, but their huge sunglasses, floppy hats, and sunburns prevent you from really seeing their features. They also can’t see you, and you have to hold back your disappointment. Alisah hugs you one more time, promising to see you again.

“Of course,” you reply. “Happy birthday. I love you.”

“I love you too!” she yells, waving as her parents lead her to their car, and you fight with the desire to just tag along before your anxiety and the day's exhausting revelations stop you in your tracks.

You wait until it disappears from the parking lot before you catch the bus back into town and hike into the forest. By then, it’s well into night. You make one stop to your lab to collect Kidra, and then head to the usual spot where you and Kozmotis meet up. Almost no time later, gentle arms wrap around you. A tongue works its way to your ear. Your stomach jumps in excitement, and you reach around to grab the back of his head. Kozmotis lets out a small “Mmm…” and lightly rakes his teeth across your neck. You settle into his grasp, but your day worms its way back into your mind. Kozmotis pauses.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, turning your face towards him and tracing small circles down your neck with his fingers. You’re silent a moment, desperately trying to hold back sobs. He nuzzles his face against yours, whispering, “Shh… Shh… I’m here.”

“I met my great-granddaughter today.” You swallow the lump in your throat. “Again.”

“What do you mean ‘again?’”

“The girl I told you about awhile ago. The one who can see me. She’s my son’s granddaughter. My son is still alive.”

He grips you tighter and mutters, “She could be lying.”

“How else would she know about and believe in me? How else could she see me? She said he was telling her stories about me.”

“Maybe… Maybe he was telling stories about something else and she just happened to connect to you.”

“He saw me in the crowd months ago. He tried to get me to stay and talk!” A few noises stammer from his mouth, and you turn to look him in the eyes. “Why are you doing this? _My son is still alive!”_

He closes his eyes for a few seconds. When he reopens them, he doesn’t meet your gaze.

“Because that’s all in the past. Because I want you _now.”_

You turn to press your forehead against his. You lift your face to his and whisper against his lips, “You _have_ me. I just come with baggage. And it turns out that baggage isn’t as past as I thought.” You sigh, then grip his robes and hiss, “I’m going to kill Pitch the next time I see him.”

He freezes. His eyes go wide in shock, then train into concern. “Why?”

“He took the only photo I had left of my partner and son. I don’t know what he’s doing with it—nothing good, I’m sure. I wish I could show you what they looked like. They were so wonderful, so understanding—” His embrace tightens further. He laces his fingers through your hair and buries his face into the crook of your neck. “—I didn’t deserve them. At all.”

His grip in your hair loosens, and his breathing evens out. He peppers a trail of kisses up your neck until he reaches your lips, and then he draws you into a deep kiss that lasts minutes and grabs moans out from the both of you. When he breaks it, he leans his chin over your shoulder and twirls a lock of your hair.

“You deserved them,” he whispers. “Whether or not _they_ deserved _you_ is a completely different question. But I know for a fact that you deserved everything you had in your mortal life.”

You relax against him. You don’t know if you believe him, but it’s nice to hear the words.

“It doesn’t really matter,” you say. “My partner is dead. I know for a fact they’ve been dead for awhile.” You sit there for a few moments before adding, “Have you seen Pitch recently?”

“It… It’s been awhile. He roams a lot farther than I do. But we cross paths often enough, being creatures of darkness.” He heaves a heavy sigh. “It’s almost impossible to be rid of him, sometimes.”

“If you see him again, could you please try and get the picture back? It’s one of the last things I have from that life.”

He traces more circles down your back.

“I’ll do my best,” he finally says. “I promise.”

You smile in the darkness, and bring his face up to yours. His eyes are still stuck in distant concern, but after you give him a quick kiss and a light nip on his ear, he chuckles and drags you both to the ground, where he pins you and kisses you until the sun starts threatening to rise.

*************

With the Halloween deadline a mere week away, Pitch revels in how far his armies have come. There are some sacrifices along the way; he knew he couldn’t keep the operation hidden from the Guardians forever, especially when they got wind of his forces. But to go from one small, broken legion to swarms upon swarms within less than four months? That is enough to be proud of.

As is his prize. He stealthily wraps an arm around around the spirit in front of him, quietly enough that their pet doesn’t even detect him. He lowers their hood from obscuring their face, and runs his lips from their neck up to their ear. They smell of earth, leather, and the sterile tang of their lab. They jolt, and then relax into his hold. Once he reaches their ear, his lightly drags his teeth across their earlobe, enjoying their excited shudder.

“Hello,” he whispers.

They turn in his arms and press a lingering kiss into his mouth. The spirit wraps their arms around him and refuses to let go for awhile. He strokes their hair, enjoying every muted sound that comes from them. He doesn’t want to let them go, either. The small, pragmatic part of him reminds him that he could just whisk them off and have them many times over if he so desires. They’re new. They barely have a grasp on their powers, or comprehend magic for that matter. They’re still trying to find reason within absurdity.

The spirit eventually breaks the kiss, looks up at him solemnly, and his heart sinks.

As luck has it, Halloween falls on a waxing gibbous this year, meaning that the moon will be too full for Kozmotis to be out and about. Tonight will be his last appearance for a fortnight or so. They spend the night speaking less and holding each other more. But they cannot stop the world from turning, and the dawn draws near.

As they approach the spirit’s clearing again, hand in hand, Pitch turns them around and pushes their back up against the gnarled tree that serves as the doorway to his lair. He can just barely hear the laughter of his armies who have come back to base—to deliver nightmares to the growing pile, to craft new nightmares, to await further instruction. He ignores them in favor of trapping the spirit’s wrists above their head in one hand and feeling a thrill run through their body.

He brings his face close to theirs. They follow his eyes, and start to move their face up to him, but he leans down to their exposed throat instead. He starts by barely dragging his teeth over their skin and slipping his other hand to their lower back. They gasp and arch up against him. He slips his hand lower, resting it on their rear and squeezing a little. Their heart beats faster.

“What are you…?” they whisper. Pitch lifts his head up and looks them in the eye. They’re half-lidded, and the spirit’s breathing is getting harsher. Beautiful.

“How far do you want to go?” he asks.

“It’ll be day soon.”

“We still have time.”

The spirit watches him for a moment, before hooking their leg around him and baring their neck. A smile crawls along their face as they watch his eyes from the corners of theirs. Pitch lets out a ragged breath. He squeezes them harder and begins roughly massaging up and down the thigh around him. He dives back down to their neck, opens his mouth, and bites them properly.

Their arms spasm and he feels their hands twitch and meekly fight against his grip. The spirit gasps and moans, and he sucks their neck to ensure a mark forms. He imagines seeing it in the light of day, knowing they were in his arms, gave themself to him. It’s also a private revenge for the mark they gave him, which still has not faded back to his gray skin tone, though the pain has subsided.

Their leg drags him even closer. They can surely feel his excitement by now. He lets his hand travel up their body until it comes to rest over their breast. The spirit tries to arch even further, but Pitch quickly skips his fingers up to their collarbone, and they cry out indignantly.

A small _huff_ comes from the side, and the both of them pause to look up at Kidra, who paces in place a few yards away. The spirit whistles and gestures with their head. Kidra bleats softly and moves one step away. The spirit whistles the command again, with a similar result. They sigh, annoyed, and lean their head against the tree.

“Don’t worry about it,” Pitch mutters, leaning over their flushed face again.

He kisses them again, coaxing their mouth open long enough to take their tongue into his. They moan and relax. He drags a finger down their chest and cups their breast, massaging it over their clothes. He releases their mouth and returns to their neck, shuddering as they gasp and squirm.

“K-Kozmotis.”

His hips jerk forward and he growls as he bites down on their neck again. They cry out loudly, then whisper his name again and again. Pitch grabs for their waist, haphazardly dragging their tunic out from where its tucked into their belt. He can barely think anymore, can barely focus on anything except what he’s doing.

“Koz!”

“Yes!” he pants in their ear. He’s heard that name fall from their lips before, but never has it sounded so wonderful.

“The sun!” they say, themself breathless and jerking their hips against his in response.

“There’s still— _ngh_ —time.”

Their tunic is free. He runs his hand under it, resting against the hot skin of their back, trying to press himself to them as much as possible. It’s been so long that he cannot remember the last time he was so close to someone like this.

“Koz!” they cry. “Kozmotis, stop!”

_Take them. Use them. You’re more than strong enough, and they are naive and weak._

With a frustrated cry, Pitch releases their hands and leans himself against the tree. He slams a fist against the branch, and a loud _crack_ echoes through the woods as a deep fissure erupts along its length. A few twigs and leaves fall down onto him and the spirit. He pants against the tree, trying to come down from all this.

Beside him, his spirit—flushed in the face, struggling to catch their breath, rubbing their wrists—leans against the tree, sweat glistening in the early dawn.

The dawn.

Coming back to his senses, Pitch finally notices that the morning was much further along than he realized. He’s quickly turning from vague shadow to stark silhouette, and soon thereafter completely visible. His heart jumps into his throat as he remembers the spirit’s promise about their next meeting with Pitch. Quickly, he presses them into a close hug.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he says, stroking their hair. “I have to go.”

“It’s okay…” They reach up and caress his neck, pulling him down for another kiss. But as they toy with his collar, they get a funny look on their face. Pitch grabs their wrist and brings it to his lips.

“Shall we continue this later?” he says.

They lick their lips and nod. The curious look has not faded, but they smile. One more kiss, and they take off toward their base, their pet following close behind. Pitch merges into the shadows as best he can, watching them turn back to try and spot him. They look utterly disheveled with their rumpled tunic and… oh, and he can just barely see the dark bruise blooming on their neck. He leans against the tree to catch his breath one more time, and then wanders back into his realm.

He pointedly ignores the curious and knowing leers of the fearlings as he walks through their ranks. The chatter rises as he ascends to the balcony that allows him to oversee his entire forces at once. Pitch catches his reflection at the top—flushed, sweaty, pupils overblown, hair messed and tousled. He smooths his hair back, takes a deep breath, and then approaches the balcony to address the fearlings and nightmares.

Kozmotis must be put away for now; Pitch Black, King of Nightmares, the Boogeyman, has the spotlight.


	9. Night of the Hunters

Finally. All Hallow’s Eve.

The plan is simple: with the forces they’ve accumulated in the recent months, Pitch and the fearlings will make the greatest push into the Guardians’ territories since the Dark Ages. An assault on their bases won’t be far behind, and by the end of next year, he should finally wrest control of the Pole from them. Raiding their resources will ensue, and the whole world will finally fear Pitch Black again as the Guardians fade into obscurity.

This is where he belongs, where he’s always belonged: on top of the world, crushing anyone who dares try and resist him. 

It’s a widespread push, but Pitch has his eyes on one specific territory in particular: Burgess. The site of his last great defeat and humiliation. The area Jack Frost calls home.

Frost is the only Guardian who doesn’t have a permanent base of any sort. Like Pitch, he must travel with his element to truly thrive, and there are only so many places on this planet that are permanently frozen. It’s a wonder he hasn’t set himself down at the Pole, but perhaps he’s too much of a bother for North to tolerate. Regardless, Pitch has ensured that the small town won’t escape the onset. From dying trees to rotting sheds to dusty basements and even to the dark undersides of beds, he and the fearlings have created plenty of means of getting to and from dreaming children. By the end of the night, Burgess will be his, and the first major victory in this new war will be complete.

After that… well, things will just get faster and faster, he supposes. The first growths of big fear have sprung up in South America and Africa following the months of concentrated efforts. And these days, with the whole world connected to each other, the fear can more easily spread. The domino effect of scapegoats and whispers will not be so easily undone, even by the concerted efforts of the Guardians. Pitch starts mapping out the timeline of his forces after tonight.

_If they focus on the nights of the full moon—but the Man In The Moon will have an advantage to alert the Guardians of their activities. Best to avoid especially intense operations those nights. The half-moon might then be the best to concentrate on, even though the light will be a hindrance to sneaking in and out of homes. Worth contemplating._

_Of course, the new moon—_

“No,” he whispers to himself. “I can’t miss that.”

But he knows that will be the only time the Guardians are at the complete disadvantage. With no moon to illuminate their paths, his nightmares and fearlings will be able to work faster, near undetectable. But… with winter coming to the northern hemisphere, these will be the longest nights that Kozmotis can reappear. Pitch smiles softly and shivers at the most recent memory of him and the spirit. As invigorating as pure childhood fear, and just as addicting.

A small noise below him yanks him from the thoughts. A fearling twitches and watches him with its empty, glowing eyes. Its toothy maw grins wide, creating a jagged slice almost the entire way around its head.

“Is everything in position?” he asks it. The fearling gives a wheezy giggle and nods. Pitch rests his hand behind his back and wanders over to watch his armies fall into formation. “Wonderful. Let’s begin.”

*************

You glare up at the moon before shutting the lab door. When you were alive, Halloween was your favorite holiday. It was filled with mischief, sweets, and a far more relaxing atmosphere than Christmas. It also meant nicer weather through the end of the year. You’ve indulged yourself in previous years, wandering through the city to enjoy the decorations, see the children dressed up, and nick a few pieces of candy. This year, you have other things on your mind.

There’s no way of getting around how frustrated you are after Kozmotis had to leave that morning. Of all the times to chance the sun… You shake you head, trying to stop remembering the way his hands felt as he clutched you close, and you fail miserably. It’s all you can do to gently lay your head down on your workbench, take a few deep breaths, and refocus on your arrows.

You work in silence for awhile, Kidra laying by your side. They sigh and roll over occasionally as they rest. You lean over and scritch their neck, causing their hind foot to twitch. Some company is better than no company, though you’ll have to work on that “go way” order. If you could work it out with Hei Bai all those years ago (for similar reasons) Kidra should be a piece of cake before the moon wanes again.

A few hours into the night, Kidra suddenly sits up, shoving your chair forward. They _boof_ as you try to free yourself from being pinned between the chair and the table. Finally, you wedge yourself out as Kidra stands and focuses on the door, giving a warning bleat. There’s a knock.

“Hey!” Toothiana’s voice comes from the other side. Kidra growls. “Hi, uh, can you talk right now?”

You shove past Kidra and squeeze out the door. They try to join you, but you whistle their “stay” command. They huff in disagreement, but settle back down. Once you’re outside, you see not only Toothiana in your clearing, but also Sandy and a white-haired teenager with a shepherd’s crook over his shoulder.

“Hi, Tooth. Sandy.” The Sandman conjures and tips a hat. Tooth swoops in to give you a quick hug. She then hovers over to the teenager.

“This is Jack Frost,” she says. He walks over and takes your hand. It’s freezing. His old hoodie is covered in shiny streaks of ice, and a barely-there shimmer of steam peels off from his shoulders.

“Nice to meet you,” you say.

“Same.” He leans on his staff and groans. “Sorry, but I don’t really get down this way much. Too hot. Which is probably why I don’t have many believers in this region.”

“Well, clearly you have enough in other places to be a Guardian.”

He looks at you curiously. “Well… It’s not so much a case of having lots of believers. Just whether or not Manny thinks you have the right potential.”

You take a quick glance up at the faceless moon, nod as convincingly as you can, and look at the others.

“So… Can I help you?” You touch your satchel. “I didn’t accidentally call you, did I?”

“No, we just wanted to ask you a few questions about Pitch,” Toothiana says. She stops hovering. “He’s been getting stronger and stronger lately.”

“Massive armies,” Sandy adds. “But quiet in the last two weeks.”

“We’re pretty sure he’s planning something big,” Jack says. “We don’t know where or when it’s coming, but he’s been causing a lot of trouble.”

Your stomach goes cold. Your interactions with him had been bad enough; you can’t imagine a more powerful boogeyman wreaking havoc on the world. A rage starts welling up within you as you remember he still has the photo.

“What can I do to help?”

Toothiana smiles and flutters again. “Well, we were wondering if you could come with us to the Pole. We wanted to get a closer look at your magic and your experiments.”

“If it’s powerful enough to give him back his fearlings, we’re wondering if they could give us an edge over him, too,” Jack says.

Your hands drop to your sides, and the fire in your belly ebbs. _Oh… of course._

“I…” You shift from foot to foot. This isn’t exactly the partnership you were hoping for, but you’ll be damned if you get nothing out of it. “I’ll go, but only—!” You hold up your hands as they all take one step forward simultaneously. “—Only if you can tell me where my son lives. And my great-granddaughter, for that matter.”

Toothiana and Sandy share an odd, slightly disappointed look. Jack, on the other hand, relaxes and steps closer.

“Your family from before you became a spirit? And they’re still alive?” he asks. You nod. He turns to the others and, looking them in the eye, says, “Yeah. We can do that for you.”

You sigh in relief and smile. Then you remember. “And, I need to come back here by the waning half-moon.”

They all look back at you. Sandy pauses where he’s creating some sort of transport.

“What for?” he whispers.

You blush and subconsciously touch the spot on your neck where Kozmotis had left his mark a week before. It’s faded, but you still drag your hood over the spot. Toothiana grins smugly.

“Ooh, is it that forest spirit you told me about awhile ago?”

You quickly turn away from her and whistle for Kidra. They burst out of the lab door and lope over to you.

Toothiana winks. “Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to get back before they miss you too much.”

“What’s the lucky spirit’s name?” Jack says, hovering on a sudden wind.

You follow Sandy to his cloud of dreamsand, murmuring, “Kozmotis,” as you command Kidra aboard. The Sandman stumbles and trips as he climbs on. He turns to you with a weird expression, but he stands and starts controlling the cloud.

As you rise above the treeline, a swirling circle pops into the sky. There’s a second’s pause before a huge object bursts out of it. It curves over the trees, and you can see that it’s a sleigh. Your eyes widen and your heart leaps when you realize what this means.

“North?” Toothiana calls.

The cloud and sleigh drift beside each other, and sure enough, a giant man with an enormous beard sits in the driver’s seat. Bunny pops up beside him.

“Jack!” he calls, breathless. “Pitch! Burgess!”

In an instant, Jack gets a dark look across his face. The wind swirls around him, and he launches into the sky. He disappears over the horizon. Toothiana hops into the sleigh and points at you as she says to Sandy, “Take them somewhere safe! We’ll—”

“No!” You carefully move over to where she is. “I’ve got a bone to pick with him, too!”

The Guardians look at you skeptically. You reach back and conjure a few of your arrows.

“He doesn’t seem to do well against the golden sand. So I’ve made a few extra mixtures for just such an occasion.” You blink back tears. “Besides, it’s kind of my fault he got so powerful. And he stole something of mine that I want to take back from him personally!”

North starts to open his mouth and shake his head, but Sandy holds up a hand. He looks at you and nods once, that odd look still on his face. But you don’t care. If Pitch wants an answer from you so badly, he’ll get one tonight. You whistle, and Kidra is already clambering onto the sleigh. You find yourself squishing between them and a very uncomfortable Bunny and Tooth. In the back of your mind, you’re freaking out about being in The Sleigh, but as soon as another swirling portal opens up, you reach up to stroke Kidra’s ear in an effort to calm yourself.

The sleigh flies straight into the portal, and the next thing you know, you’re flying over a chilly, small town with a flood of nightmares swarming the witching-hour streets.

*************

The first thing Pitch and his armies do is raid the nearby forest. They work to corrupt as much of it as possible so that Frost cannot rest easy if he ever returns. Their second goal is to find every sleeping child, every blissful dream, and take it. Leave the children paranoid and insomniac. Don’t let them even consider better possibilities. Cultivate big fear over small fear.

It’s almost disappointing how one-sided it is, but Pitch reminds himself that this means the plan is working.

The amount of fear in the air smells sharper than ozone after a thunderstorm. Pitch has nearly forgotten that it’s possible to feel so good, so whole. He can do anything. The world is just within his—

A sharp, cool wind kicks up, nearly causing Pitch to fall off of his vantage point. He looks in the direction the wind came, spying a silver shape coming towards him fast.

“Finally,” he says. “It all comes full circle.”

Pitch merges into the shadows and races on an intercept path with the boy. A wave of fearlings rises up to swipe at him. Frost screams and shoots a blast of his icy magic at it. The wave collapses with a huge hole in it, regrouping on the ground. Pitch uses the darkness to springboard up on another swirl of sand. Frost winds up again, and Pitch flies out from the spike in an arc over the spirit.

Frost freezes in midair, watching Pitch. He tries to redirect his aim, but Pitch conjures his scythe from the black sand and aims for his head. Frost hesitates, suddenly raises his staff to defend himself, and just manages to block Pitch’s swing. The idiot boy plummets to the ground.

Pitch lands lightly on a phone wire, just above his enemy. He swings the scythe over his shoulder. For a second, Frost is immobile. Then, he jerks and slowly, painfully hauls himself onto his feet.

“Hello again, young Frost,” Pitch calls. “How do you like the redecorating I’ve been up to? I think it’s nearly perfect. The only thing left is to toss out the trash and begin anew.”

Frost tries to shake himself back to lucidity, but almost instantly, a wave of fearlings and nightmares swarms around him. He gasps and struggles. He tries to call the wind, but Pitch’s armies crush him until he’s gasping for breath.

In the corner of his eyes, Pitch sees a portal open in the sky. He turns in time to see North’s sleigh burst through. Very well, then. He leaves his minions to take care of Frost and situates himself on a nearby rooftop. The Sandman flies off the sleigh, making a beeline for Pitch. The fairy, rabbit on her back, dives off right after him. She draws her swords, and he raises one boomerang above his head. Child’s play.

Then another figure comes off the sleigh. It jumps dozens of feet into the air before gliding down towards them. But it’s not North. He drives the sleigh off to the side, presumably landing it before entering the fray. This new figure is large—a creature?—and someone rides on top of it.

And as it gets closer, Pitch’s eyes widen, and his stomach seizes up. Like a Valkyrie, his dear spirit barrels towards him, bow drawn and aimed. Expression murderous. He pauses too long, and cannot recover before the other Guardians swoop down for the attack.

The Sandman just misses Pitch, his whips slicing down onto the rooftop. Pitch is thrown to the side, chunks of shrapnel cutting his skin. He rolls right into the landing path of the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny. They stomp him, and then skid to the other side of the roof. Pitch glares up at them. He dismisses his scythe and starts to raise a column of sand, when a blast of cold energy slices through his side and arm. Screaming, Pitch sees Frost pointing his staff out of the pile he's in, and he swears he can see a snarky grin just beneath the suffocating darkness. Pitch spares one more second to check the spirit’s trajectory, and then he melds back into the shadows as the Guardians try to dogpile him.

He reappears down a side alley, and he tries to stay as close to the shadows as he can. He summons a contingent of fearlings, commanding them to arc upwards and assault the Guardians. They eagerly whirl off. After a moment, there’s a low explosion, and the shadows are thrown back. A few spasm on the ground, sizzling with golden energy.

“I’ve got Jack!” Bunny yells from the roof. “You all split up and find the monster. But save a piece for me!”

Pitch shrinks back into the shadows, wandering around the streets and searching for the safest, darkest space to recover in. He finds a rusted, squeaky merry-go-round in an overgrown park away from the main thoroughfares. He steps out of the shadows, and leans on the children’s ride to catch his breath.

“Is this is, then?” he says to himself. “Is this their answer?”

He’s surprised to find a lump forming in his throat. He wipes a hand across his face, and then passes over it again when he feels tears. Pathetic. Stupid. He doesn’t need this, especially right now. He has a city to conquer, and then a whole world. He calls a fearling to his side.

“Shepherd our guests to the center of town. But keep in mind, only one has to make it.”

The minion pauses for a moment, leaning close to him. It smiles wickedly and laughs like a death rattle as is gets a good look at his face.

Pitch bellows, “Go! Now!”

The fearling dashes off ahead, and Pitch slowly wanders to the rendezvous point.

*************

At Bunny’s word, you peel off with the other Guardians to search for Pitch. You lead at the front with Kidra, who uses their scythe-like claws to tear through the nightmares, fearlings, and black sand. You have just one thing on your mind: get the photo back from him. Murder is secondary.

A huge wall of sand bursts up, blocking off a side street. Kidra almost skids right into it and its reaching tendrils, but a slash of golden sand makes it shrink back. You turn and wave a thank you to Sandy. He waves back, but he still has that same, concerned look on his face. North holds on to Toothiana as she strains and flies him right into another pack. North laughs heartily and lays into the fearlings. Toothiana drops from the sky, draws her own swords, and fights back to back with him. You start steering Kidra over to it, but another, taller wall of sand cuts them off.

“Tooth!” you yell, keeping hold of Kidra as they rear up. You launch an arrow right into it. A hole opens for a split-second, and Toothiana motions for you to go on. You look at Sandy and keep moving.

A few more turns later, and it becomes obvious the walls of sand and creatures flying up around you are funneling you somewhere. You ease up on Kidra until you're even with Sandy.

“Make some sand!” you say, summoning your own power.

The Sandman conjures a huge ball of the golden sand, and you lean over to touch it. The iridescence catches it, just like at that sleepover so many months ago, and the ball whirls and pulses. Sandy watches it nervously, but the longer he holds it, the more intrigued he looks. He smiles up at you. You nod.

“Just in case.”

Another wall bursts up between you, and it’s immediately dispelled as Sandy tosses a handful of the amplified sand into it. He floats next to you and gives you a thumbs-up. A single fearling drops down onto him from the roof and tugs on his hair. Sandy’s flight pattern is disrupted enough that he starts lagging behind, and even more fearlings and nightmares start piling on him. You can just see some very bright golden blasts shoot through the gaps in the heap, but he makes it free just as the last wall cuts you off from him.

Kidra takes off down the road. You focus on what’s in front of you and try to keep a watch out for wherever the darkness is leading you. Eventually, you come to a roundabout where several streets meet, a statue on the island in the middle. You draw an arrow and nock it as Kidra slowly walks across the strangely empty area.

You slip off of Kidra and start looking around. It’s too quiet here. In the distance, you see the pulsating walls and columns and masses of Pitch’s armies. The adrenaline that’s been carrying you this far starts to fade, and the first hint of gut-wrenching anxiety makes itself known. You twirl quickly back and forth, trying to make sure nothing sneaks up on you. But it is still so quiet. The only sound is a bunch of abandoned candy wrappers getting tossed around by the slight breeze.

Suddenly, Kidra yelps, and there’s a thud. You turn in time to see a pack of fearlings on nightmares tossing black ropes around Kidra. Kidra tries to bellow, but the fearlings manage to get one around their mouth.

“Let go of them!” you yell, firing the arrow at the monsters. One disintegrates, but another quickly replaces it. You fire again and again until you’re down to your last. The pack of darkness hasn’t relented. You charge, summoning power to your hands.

Halfway over, a tendril wraps itself around your ankle, and you collapse to the ground, your power dispersing, your bow flying out of your hand, your final arrow snapping in two. You quickly grab for the arrow tip, and then try to drag your way over to your weapon.

Another tendril shoots around your other leg and drags you backwards. A third wraps around your waist, tugging so that you’re upright. You move to stab it to free yourself, and your wrist is trapped above your head. The tendrils pull you against the statue, and the sand encases you yet again. You tug the arm pressed across your torso, slowly trying to move it down to your satchel. The sand squeezes you nearly too tight for you to breathe. Just as you’re close, a wave of black sand erupts in front of you, and a figure steps out of the darkness.

The first thing you notice is the eyes: burning and glowing. Familiar. You relax for a moment, almost start to smile. And then the sand falls, taking the darkness with it. The figure carrying the eyes resolves into a tall, lanky, also familiar form. He looks at you with disappointment, and he breaks eye contact as he sighs.

You’re on the verge of tears as you whisper, “Kozmotis?”


	10. Plans, Interrupted

Before you stands Pitch Black: King of Nightmares, Boogeyman. The fearmonger of childhoods. The man who stole the last remnant you had of your former life.

Before you are the burning, comforting eyes of Kozmotis: ancient forest spirit, your first new friend in your immortal life. A gentle, understanding man. Your lover.

Reconciling both of these realities is almost too much for you to take.

As you whisper Kozmotis’ name, however, Pitch flinches. He closes his eyes, sighs, and when he looks at you again, he glares with the intensity of a determined soldier.

“I was hoping they’d bring me Frost or the Bunny,” he growls. His eyes flicker over you. “You’ll do, I guess. Though, I suppose this is your answer?”

He starts to reach out as if he’s going to run a finger over your jaw. A part of you anticipates it. Halfway there, he balls his hand into a fist and leans on the statue, looming over you.

“What do they have that I don’t, hm?” Pitch asks.

“I just want the photo back,” you say. Your fingertips are so close to the satchel. Pitch searches your face.

“Is that honestly all?” He twists a bit of your hair between his fingers, looking thoughtful. “You would leave here as soon as it was back in your possession?”

The touch simultaneously makes your stomach leap and repulses you. His gaze bores into yours, anticipating the answer. You shift a little, trying to get your bag open, breaking eye contact. Pitch pulls your face back and forces you to look at him. His brows are knit together in frustration, and the edges of his eyes are shiny, as if he’s holding back tears.

“Would you?”

You swallow. “I… Please give it back.”

He lets go of you and backs up a few steps. “Answer me: why side with them?”

“Right now, they’re my best shot at getting some sort of revenge. And answers I’ve been wanting for awhile. You haven’t exactly made a good impression on me. Not like this, anyway.”

“But am I wrong? Am I wrong about their motives and actions?” He looks wildly at you. “Are they not still trying to get you behind their stronghold walls for one reason or another? Do you think they actually _care_ about _you?”_

“Do _you_ actually care?” you shout. “Do you actually give half a damn about my well-being, or do you just care about buffing your armies and tearing all hope away from children?”

You snap open the satchel under the sand. The effort of dragging your arm through the tightly held sand without alerting Pitch is exhausting. Being near all of this black sand saps even more from you. You’re not sure how long you’ll last under all this stress. Even now, the edges of your consciousness are going fuzzy, like you’re trying to concentrate on something in a dream. Pitch gets close again.

“There’s a story out there about a scorpion and a frog. The scorpion asks the frog to ferry it across a river, but the frog insists the scorpion will just sting it, killing them both. The scorpion assures the frog it’ll do no such thing. But sure enough, the scorpion stings the frog, and they both drown. Before drowning, the scorpion tells the frog that to sting and kill is in its nature.

“I am a being of shadows, fear, and darkness. I feed and thrive on lies, bigotry, and horror. I can no more change those things about me than a scorpion can stop stinging its prey. I have long been too far gone, if I was ever able to change in the first place.”

“That’s…” you watch him as he leans over you again. His eyes are the same glittering swirls, like a solar eclipse, even in this light. “That’s a terrible story.”

“But it’s no less true.”

You manage to grab the petal bottle. You try to unscrew the cap with just your one hand, but either sweaty palms or nerves has you slipping off of it. You’re almost there, though. You’re almost there.

“I don’t know if I believe that,” you whisper. “You’ve had me at your mercy many times. As soon as you saw how my power could strengthen your minions, you could have just taken me. You even said so yourself the last time we met like this.”

Pitch gazes just over your head, absentmindedly taking another bit of your hair and twirling it in his fingertips. He shakes his head.

“So why didn’t you?” you ask him.

“Because…” He trails a finger down the side of your face and under your jaw. He gently lifts it until you’re looking at him properly. “Because I…” He gets very, very close, and his eyes soften. He smiles. “Because you would be far too distracting.”

You try to crane you neck up a little more. “Would that be so bad?”

You finally unscrew the bottle with a muffled _fuhmp._ Pitch snaps his attention to the sound. You immediately reach in for one of the petals as he says, “What was that?”

He shifts the sand away from your hand. You just manage to grip one of the petals as he drags the bottle and remaining petal away from you. He brings it to his hand and sighs. He straightens back up, moves away from you and holds out the bottle.

“This again?” He throws the bottle on the ground. It smashes and he stomps on the one petal left, shredding it between his foot and the asphalt. “You—”

He glances up to see your clenched fist. A small aura of green peeks through your fingers. Pitch Black sways in place before straightening up yet again and nodding. He tries to hide disappointment behind a bleak smile.

“It’s only what I deserve, I’m sure.”

“Help,” you whisper.

The green aura flares, and then recedes. You open you fingers to see small dandelion seeds float up and disappear. Nothing happens immediately. You and Pitch just stare at each other. He smiles solemnly, his eyes shiny again. Suddenly, a crack breaks through the night.

The sleigh bounces off a nearby rooftop as it drifts low. You can just see all of the Guardians piled into it. Sandy breaks off two handfuls of the amplified sand and shoots them down into the space. One hits the dark pile of mounted fearlings who’ve kept Kidra restrained. They disappear in an instant, and Kidra bellows and bleats, dashing over to you.

The second hits the cocoon of sand, destroying it and letting you drop to the ground. The force knocks the wind out of you, though, and you spend a second on the ground coughing and catching your breath. Pitch growls and sends a few bullets of sand up at the sleigh, but they’re broken by the slashes of Toothiana’s swords and a precise boomerang throw from Bunny.

Kidra gently hauls you onto your feet with their beak, and you lift yourself over their neck. You take one last look at Pitch before squeezing your heels. Kidra winds up for a moment, searching with their ears, and then springs into the air. They spread their limbs out and catch the breeze, gliding for a moment before latching on to the sleigh as it passes. It shudders, but you find yourself again crammed inside with several uncomfortable Guardians.

Tooth squeezes over and puts a hand on your shoulder. Jack Frost nods in recognition, but he’s shaking and leaning more heavily on his staff, panting. Bunny and Sandy sit with arms crossed, Bunny shaking his knee in silent anxiety. There’s a moment of silence as you all ascend high into the sky.

“Is this how you all felt the last time Pitch was active?” Jack mumbles. The other Guardians reply affirmatively. Jack laughs. “Hah… Losing sucks.”

Suddenly, North slaps the dashboard. Everyone jumps and looks at him.

“This is not loss! Only setback!” he shouts.

He turns back, smiling with a twinkle in his eye and pats Jack’s shoulder. “We have been through worse, and we recover. We regroup, re-plan, and you,” he looks at you. “You finally achieve dream of seeing Santa’s workshop.”

Bunny and Tooth groan and rolls their eyes, but they don’t object. Jack chuckles again, but doesn’t open his eyes. The air gets colder, and you just stare at the point where you left Pitch—Kozmotis—back in the town. North takes a shiny sphere from his bag and shakes it. Just as he starts to whisper “North Pole,” you whistle.

Kidra perks up and does their best to perch on the edge of the sleigh without disturbing it too much. You shove past everyone and swing your leg over their neck.

“Whaddya think you’re doin’?” Bunny asks.

Toothiana grabs your arm, but you wrench it out of her grasp. You focus on the clouds below you, calculating which way to lead Kidra as soon as you’re off the sleigh. Finally, with one last look at the Guardians, you squeeze your heels, and Kidra leaps. Using the north star, you steer them in a southeasterly direction, ignoring the yells behind you.

_How bold of him,_ you think as the wind howls in your ears.

*************

As the sleigh flies up over the clouds, Burgess is won. All of the hard work Pitch has put into his armies and this plan is justified in the instant. But he just watches the area where the sleigh disappeared, trying in vain to keep watch on the speck.

The armies around him continue to barge their way through the streets, spreading out and checking every corner for hope and fun and wonder and happy memories to turn. It is the most devastating rout a town has experienced this century, and very few will be wise to it even happening. They will be the next to deal with.

“Lo-o-ord… Pi-i-itch…”

Pitch spins around, ready to strike at the source of the voice. Behind him, a shadow rises from the ground. Pitch watches as hollow eyes emerge from the scratch, gazing from an otherwise featureless face. The head lolls on a neck that should be too thin to support it. The being takes a lumbering step forward on legs too long, and it swings arms that end in terrifyingly long fingers tipped with equally long claws. When it settles down after fully exiting the darkness, it tucks its arms and legs close to its body. It resembles a humanoid just enough that a first glance would read as a shadowed human face visible only at the periphery of vision. On second glance, anyone looking would be thrown headfirst into a fight-or-flight response as their mind realizes that there is something not right about the apparition.

A Nightmare Man stands before Pitch Black. He hasn’t seen one of them in many centuries, but as it stands unnaturally still, he feels a bolt of victory through his heart. Pitch approaches the Nightmare Man.

“Wonderful to see one of you again,” he says. “Been resting well over the last few years?”

The Nightmare Man speaks like a human inhaling their final breath, “Feeding… Slowly…”

Pitch nods. He looks around, hoping that another would appear. Alas, it seems there is still not enough fear to go around to summon another. All the time in the world to change that. They will become his brigadiers once more, and conquest of the whole world will come shortly after.

“Go and gather up enough forces to redirect our efforts across the world. You will remain here to make sure the Guardians don’t make it back. I’m sure Frost is feeling weak at the moment, but he still has more than enough believers to his name to stay afloat.”

The Nightmare Man slowly moans and nods its head. It floats across the roads toward the horde of fearlings and nightmares. As it heads into the masses, there’s a dull clatter as it passes over part of the asphalt. Pitch walks over to the object.

It’s the spirit’s bow. Pitch picks up the curved wood. It’s heavier than he thought it would be, and when he tries to draw the string back, it takes much more force than it looks. The spirit makes it look easy to draw such a weapon. Pitch clenches his fist around it and looks back at the spot in the sky, but he knows they’re well and gone. Probably off to the North Pole. Probably preparing to kill him the next opportunity they get.

Pitch raises the bow above his head, ready to smash it on the ground and be done with everything. With any luck, it’ll slow them down and hinder their ability to get their revenge. As he does so, a small, paper rectangle flutters from his robes. For a split-second, he registers the photograph: the spirit, their former lover, their child. Their contentment and joy. He starts to bring the bow down in an arc. The photo hits the ground, landing directly in the intended path of the bow.

Pitch halts the bow mere inches from the ground. He pants against the strain for a moment, and then leans down to pick up the photo. He brings it close, roaming his eyes from one face to the next, finally resting on the one he’s become so intimately familiar with.

“I suppose this _is_ my own fault,” he says out loud.

He taps the end of the bow against the ground a few times, pocketing the photo again. He holds the bow in both hands, feeling its weight.

“A trophy, then,” Pitch decides, carrying the weapon into the shadows around him. “A memento…”

He sets the bow on a shelf in his private chambers. It remains there for the next bit of time or so, until a wild chatter spreads from fearling to fearling until finally reaching his own ears. Movement in the forest clearing. The clearing with the hag’s hut. The hut that houses a spirit and their creature born from darkness and other powers.

As soon as he hears the rumblings, Pitch sets off to the spirit’s clearing. He emerges into the quasi-dark night, lit by the last quarter of moon.

_If things had gone differently,_ he muses, _Kozmotis would be back. And enjoying himself._

Pitch thinks about the last night with the spirit as Kozmotis. He sighs, and keeps to the shadows to watch. For long while, he’s not sure if they’re truly here, but not long after the sun begins to rise, the door creaks open. The spirit and their pet creep out into the fresh morning air. The creature pauses to sniff the air for a moment, and searches with their ears. But the spirit just calls to them, and they follow.

Pitch leans against a tree, watching them leave to their next goal. Just as beautiful as ever. He feels like slapping himself, mucking that whole thing up.

No, it was inevitable, he tells himself. Even if the charade had been allowed to continue, what were the chances that they’d accept him once he himself commanded the time of the reveal?

Pitch stalks the trees around their home for the next few nights, and then a few days, as it seems the spirit has taken to working in the sun. They seem in relatively good health, though they don’t utter a word beyond the occasional _tsk_ or hum towards Kidra. Once, Pitch chances getting nearer to the treeline. The spirit pauses what they’re doing, and squints his direction. They turn away in a moment, whistling for Kidra to search. Pitch barely makes it back to his lair before the creature can find him and drag him by his ankles into the sun. He doesn’t return for a week.

When he can finally bring himself to go back, he finds the spirit on their porch entertaining the Sandman. He sits there, watching Kidra from the corner of his eyes as they lay on their belly, looking at him as much as a creature with no eyes can. The spirit clears their throat.

“This is the third time you’ve been by in the last few weeks,” the spirit says. “I don’t know what else to tell you except that he’s out there, I think he’s been by recently, but I don’t particularly want company at the moment. I have a lot on my mind.”

Pitch does his best to move as close as possible to hear the infamously quiet Guardian speak.

“—can guarantee your safety if you head to the Pole. We can beat back Pitch eventually, but if he gets a hold of you for your power, it will take a lot more time,” the Sandman whispers. “Please! You—”

“I’m very familiar with testing and studies done for the so-called ‘greater good,’” the spirit says in a clipped voice. “And I’m familiar with the many, many justifications of why someone’s pet project is part of that ‘greater good.’”

The Sandman shakes his head. “You don’t understand. Pitch has a history a thousands of years long. He has conquered and conquered only in the name of misery and fear. Please, I’m begging you, come to the Pole and we can help you truly understand your potential. Who knows? Perhaps in time, the Man In The Moon—”

“I can’t see him. I can only believe your Man In The Moon is up there simply because magic exists and destroyed my understanding of the world. There may as well be a man living in the moon, looking down and deciding he’s important enough to recruit followers.”

Before the Sandman can respond, the spirit holds up a hand.

“Please leave,” they say quietly. “If I ever need your help, I’ll come looking for you.”

Sandy stands and smooths out his robes. He conjures a small cloud to fly away on, hops on, and then looks back.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather learn the full truth behind Kozmotis?”

The spirit glares up at him and whistles for Kidra. The Sandman quickly flies off, and the creature follows him for awhile before eventually walking back into the clearing. They lock themself in their lab, and the only sounds to be heard are the ugly sobs of the spirit.

Pitch nearly rushes into the lab at the sound, but instead, he returns to his lair and his private chambers. He glances at the bow.

_They’ve probably procured another already,_ he thinks as he takes it in his hands.

Carefully, he makes his way among the shadows of the night to their home. There’s a brief moment when Kidra lets out an insistent sound and scratches at the door, but then the creatures calms.

Pitch quietly scrambles to find a place for the bow. He moves a few papers around on the cluttered, uneven counter and gently places in down, hopefully where the spirit can easily see it. He turns to leave, and then pauses. He takes out the photo.

He’s returning the bow. There’s no reason why he should have to give this up as well. Even if he can’t use it as leverage, it’s the only thing he has that has their image on it.

_And that is exactly why they want it back so much,_ he says to himself as his eyes flicker over their spouse and son.

He realizes that this is probably goodbye, that the only way he could possibly see them again is as enemies on the battlefield. But again, it seems like the most inevitable outcome. He’d be fooling himself to believe anything else.

He tucks the photo under the bow and immediately exits their home. Back in the treeline, he watches, just in case they immediately find it.

They don’t.

He waits a while longer, in the hope that he can see them exit their lab as dawn approaches.

They don’t.

As the dark circle of the moon is about to fade with the morning light, Pitch whispers, “If you do exist in some manner, Lady Selene, then please humor one old fool’s wish:

“The spirit here trusts you. They believe you called them into this life. For what purpose, I’m not sure they even know. If there even was one. But I ask you to please keep them out of my battles, out of my way.

“I am what I am, and there is no changing that. But perhaps there is a chance for them.”

He drifts down, down, down into his realm. The Nightmare Man greets him at the entrance.

“Second… Strike…?” it wheezes.

“Soon enough. Sooner than later. I will go see my armies, and you and I shall go over the next strategies.”

The Nightmare Man’s face stretches and a terrible gasp of a laugh comes from it. It follows him to where the swarms of nightmares and fearlings watch him, wait for his word. Pitch Black raises his arms, and they all go silent.


	11. The Other Scorpion

The day you met your future spouse, you also met their girlfriend of five years. A gorgeous, buff, self-assured young woman. You knew right away that you didn’t deserve the person right in front of you, no matter how bright their smile or understanding they were. But you were also sure that their girlfriend didn’t deserve them, either.

Six months after meeting them, they dumped their girlfriend. It was ugly, drawn-out, and you couldn’t help but be glad that she’d finally stopped convincing herself that she was worthy of this person.

One year later, they asked you out. You jumped at the chance, deciding that a taste of paradise was better than never knowing.

Two years later, they married you, and you became acutely aware they were tying themself inextricably to you.

Three years later, you had a son. You loved him and your partner so much, but you knew you didn’t deserve your good fortune.

Five years after that, they were rushed to the hospital after a sweetener you placed in their morning coffee lead to anaphlyaxis and a minor stroke. They survived. They stayed with you. You felt cursed by luck.

Five years later, you disappeared on the night of the new moon on a routine camping trip, and you knew you’d only begun correcting the balance.

How bold of Pitch, indeed, to believe all that about himself when you’ve been the scorpion this whole time.

Barely a few days pass after you get back from Burgess when the Sandman appears at your home. He knocks so quietly you almost miss it, but Kidra hauls themself up and goes to investigate. When you open the door, his round face looks up at you, and he smiles.

“Hi,” you reply. “I’m glad you made it out of there safely. Are the others okay?”

He nods, and then points to you with a questioning look on his face.

“I’m fine. It’ll take a bit to readjust.” You feel exponentially more exhausted. “Sorry about bouncing on you all that day. I just… I couldn’t—”

“Because of Kozmotis,” he whispers. You try to supress your blush, and you narrow your eyes.

“What does that name mean to you?”

Sandy floats up and lays a hand on your wrist. “I can explain everything if you just come with me to the Pole. You’ll be safe there, out of harm’s way.”

It seems the Guardians are still on track for their original plan. But you’re honestly not sure you know what you want anymore. It made sense before, when all you wanted was a little light vengeance. Afterwards… You haven’t been this confused since you were alive.

“I think I’m okay here for now. I’m not really looking to be around a bunch of people.”

He sighs. “He knows where you live. He might come back for you.”

“I can handle him.”

He nods. “Indeed. To a point. Your magic might be able to work offensively with practice, but it could enhance ours in the meantime. It would give us a better chance at bringing him in.”

“I’ll handle him _by myself_ ," you growl, trying to hide the shake in your voice. "You’ve defeated him before, surely you can think of something again.”

He stares at you with a very flat line of a mouth on his face. You stare right back, not bothering to hide the mental exhaustion leaking from you. The standoff continues for a few good minutes until you sigh.

“What does that name mean to you?” you repeat.

He looks around nervously at the edges of the clearing, and you just about have enough.

“Tell me this so-called important information or leave. I have things to do.” You turn and head for your lab. He places a hand on your shoulder.

“Please. I know it’s difficult, but you could help us fight against the worst the world has to offer—”

“Tell me what you know or _leave me alone.”_

He heaves an irritated breath, glances around the clearing again, and starts floating elsewhere. Before he gets too far, he whispers, “I’ll be back soon. I hope you feel better—and more amenable—by then.”

You make sure he’s gone before going back to your lab and obsessively bury yourself in making new arrows. Hundreds of them. All of which are tinged in some part with the golden sand so that if Pitch does come back, you can shoot permanent holes through him. You can figure out the lack of a bow later.

It’s barely three days when he shows up again, going through the same motions: come to the Pole, Pitch is evil, what if he comes back, Kozmotis. Every time he mentions the name, you’re sent through images of the last year. His voice, his laugh, his gentle tone of encouragement. His touch. It all haunts you. That’s what you get for not continuing to ignore your mental impulses.

You send Sandy away again when it becomes clear he has no intentions of compromising.

Most of your time is spent either in the lab at nights or wandering through the city during the day, vainly hoping to catch sight of Alisah again. The nearest city to this one, where you’re from, is twenty-five miles away. You’ve run into Alisah three times, within only about a span of eight months, so you’re sure she has to live in the coastal town you've lived next to since you died. But, it’s a city with so many winding roads and dozens upon dozens of houses and parents and children. You may as well be looking for a specific grain of sand on the beach.

The third time Sandy comes back, with no change in tact or attitude, you send Kidra after him, hoping he’ll finally understand that you want to be treated as someone who can make decisions, not as something to be used in a war you never signed up for. You’ve done that before, and you gave in then. And you paid for it.

You shut yourself in your lab for hours. Not even really working on anything, just wanting to have the world fall away around you. And you finally cry. About Kozmotis, Pitch, the good times and bad times, how those are now swirling together in your mind and you’re not really sure which is which anymore, how you had so easily taken your spouse for granted. You couldn’t even keep their photo safe for a century.

As the hours pass, your sobbing subsides, and you glance through one of the many knotholes in the wooden walls of your lab that refuses to stay patched over. Selene hangs in the sky, silent, watching.

“Is this Hell, actually? Was I so terrible in life that you decided to show me how aimless everything really is? You called me your knight the day you took me. And I have weapons and a—a steed, I guess? I can create something from nothing, but what do I have to show for it? What is the point?”

Selene turns her eyes to you and blinks slowly as a cloud briefly covers the moon. Kidra shivers, growls, and tries to scratch at the door. You take a moment to calm them down, and as they settle, you can barely hear Selene’s voice:

_"I have granted you no boon except a new life and a means to express yourself in it."_

Laying your head down, you continue to sob until well past morning. It’s only when Kidra practically drags out out of your chair that you trudge to your house to clean up and toss them some food. You clamber through the doorway, barely glancing around. You run a damp cloth over your body and face, finally breathing evenly for the first time in hours. As the sun pours through the windows, you finally take everything in—and you pause.

Your bow is on the counter. The bow you had left in Burgess after you were disarmed by the fearlings. You pick it up gingerly, trying to make sure it isn’t a trap. The plain piece of wood in your hand is silent and inert. And then you see what’s being held under the bow.

A simple photo. The last piece of your former life. The least bit more worn around the edges, but the important parts are intact.

You slide to the floor, close to breaking down again. This is too much. Too, too much and too quickly. You glance around, making sure he isn’t skulking around in the corner. You search every nook and cranny, every shadow thick and thin. Kidra checks after you, and then you head out to the treeline, running in circles around the clearing for a bit. He’s not there.

You scramble to the lab and dig through one of the drawers. It’s a little crushed, but the black petal Pitch corrupted is still intact. You’re about to call, when you stop yourself. It’s the middle of the day. Even if he wanted to respond, it might be better to wait. At the very least, you should wait on it in case you realize this would be a mistake. You’ve talked yourself out of stupidity this way before. Digging through your other bottles, you finally unearth the last petal you got from Bunny, and tuck it into your satchel. You’d rather not run to them at this point, but a last-ditch effort is never the worst back-up plan.

You wait for nightfall, spending a lot of that time gazing at the photograph, remembering why you instantly fell in love with your partner. Their joy, their gentleness, the feel of their self-assured arm around your shoulder that let you know they were there for you. How wonderful your son looked at that age! Ready to take on the world and find his place in it.

Just at sunset, you hear light footsteps. Kidra sticks their head out the door and bleats.

“Woah, woah. It’s all right, pooch, I’m a friend,” a vaguely familiar, young voice says. Jack Frost hops onto the porch and leans into the doorway. His eyes are ringed with dark circles, and he has to catch himself on his staff as he drops, but otherwise he looks well. Enough believers around the world to sustain him, even if his home is lost. He taps his staff against the door frame a few times.

“May I come in?”

You push past Kidra and step out to him, tucking the picture into a pocket with the petal and making sure you have a good grip on the bow.

“Please… I don’t mean to cause trouble, but I really just want—”

“To be left alone. I get it.” He perches on the porch railing and lets one leg swing off of it. “You act like you’re the first spirit with issues.”

You lean your elbows on the railing beside him, watching him and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He just looks out across the treetops at the oranges and purples weaving their way over the evening skies. He takes a deep breath in, and a long breath out, closing his eyes. When he doesn’t move to speak, you look out and stand with him. The first sounds of the nocturnal forest start up when Jack finally talks.

“I was about seventeen when the Moon chose me. I didn’t really understand what he wanted from me for a long, long time—centuries, actually. But about fifty years ago, I finally figured it out.”

You decide to humor him. “So, why were you chosen?”

“To be the embodiment of fun.” He smiles and grimaces. “I saved my little sister from falling through ice using a game to distract her.”

“Oh,” you say, turning to him. He has a wistful expression on his face. “And the Moon just snatched you up then and there? Rude.”

He lets out a hollow laugh. “I fell though the ice instead, so it was then or never.”

You stare at him, eyes wide, gasping. He looks at you with his exhausted eyes and just shrugs.

“You... didn’t just fall through the ice…" You try to find the right words. "You died? Full stop?”

He nods and tugs at his hair. “Used to be brown.”

Your back aches in three different places. It hasn’t felt so sharp in decades. Your breath becomes shallow, and you gulp for air. You break out in a sweat as the memories of being pinned up against the tree by spikes and invisible weight driving their way from your back to your chest, trying to see which way your son ran once all hell broke loose. A freezing touch on your shoulder jolts you back to the present. Jack’s looking at you strangely.

“You okay?”

“Yea—” You cough. “Yeah… Well, no.” You sigh. “The night I turned into a spirit, something attacked me and my son while we were camping. I couldn’t see it, but it managed to stab me through the back and tack me to a tree. Given what I know now, it was probably another spirit.”

Jack looks horrified, but also relieved.

“Wow… Wow, I didn’t know if I’d ever meet another spirit who… Wow, I’m so sorry.”

 _Stop talking,_ you say to yourself. _This is more than anyone need to know. You didn’t even tell Koz—You didn’t even tell_ him _all this._

Jack lets the conversation go silent for a moment, and the two of you stand there. Finally he says, “I just feel bad that I’d lost my memory of my sister for three hundred years. I didn’t get to say goodbye to her.” His clear blue stare bores into you, a knowing sparkle in them. “But from what I understand, you have family that’s still alive.”

“Yeah. My son.” You hold out the picture hold to him. He reaches for it, but you move it out of his reach. He watches you for a moment before leaning in, keeping his hands to his side.

“You look really happy with them.”

“It was some good times. And…” Tears form in your eyes. “I recently found out that I have a great-granddaughter.”

He nods. “Yeah, I think I remember you saying something about it that one night.” He sighs and stretches. “We can still help you find them. Trust me, I know what it’s like to regret lost time.”

You try to be polite, but the conversation is veering into uncomfortable territory. “Look, no offense, but Sandy has already tried to get me to the Pole several times, and I—”

“Yeah, that _is_ why I’m here,” he says, glancing briefly over the railing. “Not gonna even try lying to you. But,” he adds as you start to move away, “I’m not here to try and harass you into it.

“As a Guardian, I’m sworn to protect kids from fear and evil, and Pitch has, historically, been the main source for both on Earth. According to Sandy, he was also a huge problem out in space before he came here.”

You’re dumbstruck, and it must show on your face because Jack laughs and gets a similarly incredulous look on his.

“Yeah, I thought that was wild, too! Turns out Sandy, Bunny, and Manny are also from way out there.”

“The Sandman, the Easter Bunny, the Man In The Moon, and the Boogeyman… are aliens.” As you say a string of words you never thought would come out of your mouth, you lean on the railing again. You furrow your brow and point at Jack. Before you can open your mouth, he laughs again.

“No, no. I’m homegrown right here on this planet. Lived here, died here. Granted, when I was alive, space travel wasn’t really a thing outside of _really_ tall tales. People were just getting into long boat rides across the oceans.”

You lean on the railing and ponder just how old this childlike spirit is. They’re all so old. Surely they’ve got to know what they’re talking about.

“Sooo…”Jack leans over to you. “Whaddya say? It doesn’t even have to be the Pole. You could see the Tooth Palace, Bunny’s Warren, the Island of Sleepy Sands, Ganderly...”

“I don’t… I still don’t like the idea of being examined. I don’t want to just be some piece of the puzzle in your war.”

He holds out his hand and smiles kindly. “Like it or not, you _have_ become part of it. And for as long as you need protection, we can provide it. And,” he glances around the clearing and says a little louder and clearer, “if you really, really want to leave, we won’t stop you.”

You’re still hesitant.

“At the very least, let me show you how fun this spirit thing is.” He grins. “I have pranks I’ve been wanting to pull on these guys for _years_ but I need an accomplice to pull them off.”

 _Would that be so bad?_ You think. _Alisah believes in you. And perhaps you owe it to your son to make sure the ones he loves don’t live as miserably as you do._

Kidra stands and makes a noise, looking down below the porch. They scratch inquisitively at the wood, turning their head and ears. They keep their attention in that spot, barely twitching.

“Hey,” you say. “Whatcha see?”

Jack moves around you and holds his hand out again, a little insistently. He glances over the edge of the railing again. You follow his eyeline, but he quickly says your name. You look back up at him. He’s shaking visibly, and his smile seems a little more plastic. His eyes are plastered to yours, but they don’t have nearly as much genuine kindness anymore. They’re more desperate. Kidra growls and stomps, still not moving from their point.

Your stomach is already in freefall as you lean over the railing to see what’s bothering Kidra. Beside you, Jack chants, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…” under his breath. You see the underside of the porch just as a hole in the ground closes up, a rare flower blooming and wilting in the spot where it used to be. You swing back up to the porch and immediately draw an arrow into your bow, aiming at Jack.

 _Give loneliness an inch, and it’ll take a mile,_ you tell yourself.

He stumbles backwards to get away and just says, “It didn’t have to be this way.”

You shoot at him.

A boomerang intercepts the arrow, and you hear yells coming from all sides of the clearing. You start to load another arrow, but before you can aim properly, Kidra shoves you out of the way of a streak of gold. It explodes just above you, the sand raining down onto you and Kidra. Immediately, you start to feel woozy, but none lands in your eyes. You’re still awake. Kidra stumbles a step beside you. You lean on each other for support.

Jack backs up, lightly hovering on a wind. He braces himself and winds up his staff. It starts to glow blue, illuminating the sweat on his brow. You duck and try to scramble away, dragging Kidra with you. An icy blast covers the porch, creating a film under and around your feet. Kidra bellows and punches one of their claws through the ice. You slam a corner of your bow down, cracking the film around yours, letting Kidra drag you across the porch.

Another ball of golden sand explodes as it hits the railing, and you barely manage to cover your face. But you’re struggling to keep your eyes open now, and you’re practically dragging on the ground. A streak of purple and green flits above you, surrounded by smaller flying fairies.

“I’ve got them!” you hear Toothiana yell.

“I’ve got the tunnel!” Bunny responds

Sandy makes it up to the porch. From where you are, you can just make out the swirl of gold. You struggle to focus on his face. His face is screwed up in a pitiful look, and he’s gathering up more sand in his hands.

“It’s over,” he whispers. “We’re taking you somewhere safe until this is resolved.”

You haul yourself up with Kidra’s neck. They’re shaking and panting in an effort to keep standing. You summon your raw power to your hand, hoping this works. Just as Sandy starts to make his way over, you take a deep breath, get a good grip on Kidra’s mane, and send a spherical blast of your power out.

The blast is weaker than the one you shot at Pitch because you’re exhausted. But it still manages to knock Sandy back a few steps, and Toothiana has to land on the roof. As soon as the energy leaves your body, you nearly black out. You’re just keeping yourself together when you hear Toothiana.

“—raw creativity? Geez no wonder Pitch got so crafty so fast. Oh! Oh my god, I just figured out how I should—”

“Focus!” Jack says.

With your last ounce of awareness, you bring your lips together and whistle. Kidra winds up and leaps. They clip Toothiana on the way up. It’s nowhere near fifty feet this time, but they mange to break past the roof and glide into the trees, barely avoiding one last bullet of golden sand.

The Guardians yell after you, but it’s all an incoherent mess. When Kidra lands, you whistle again, and they leap and glide. More distance. You need as much distance between you and them as possible. You steer as much as you can, the night sweeping over you as you head deeper into the forest. You try to whistle once more, but not only does it take longer than you’d like to actually manage the correct sound, but Kidra doesn’t even make it five feet from the ground. You just hold tight and pray that they’ve lost your trail.

The night moves on, and when Kidra finally curls up in the hollow trunk of a dead tree, you’re not sure if you’re conscious or dreaming. But it doesn’t matter. You made your escape, and all you can do is hope Selene grants you mercy and lets you wake up before they close in. Your eyelids fall shut, and that’s the last thing you know for hours.


	12. Victory

A woman’s face has haunted Pitch for as long as he can remember. He can never make out all of her features at once, cannot see and hear her at the same time. Sometimes, when the visions appear, he can just barely feel her soft hands on his. But there are always grainy shadows surrounding her. Every time she flashes before his eyes—or the young girl who sometimes accompanies her—he feels like he’s forgetting something terribly important.

But in a thousand years, he’s learned nothing about her identity. He’s almost convinced he made her up. If she’s a mortal, then she’s more than dead by now. If she’s an immortal, then they have been apart so long, they may as well be half-forgotten hallucinations to each other.

_And yet, he’s smiling as he sorts through papers, listening to her chastise the young one again. His armor rests at the back of his closet, forgotten for the time being. The young girl races down the hallway, calling his name. He braces himself and scoops her up, swinging her around and hugging her close. The older, beautiful woman joins them, and he finds himself with one arm around each of them, the woman planting a kiss on his cheek. There is nothing but hope and joy in his heart._

Perhaps in his most lonesome hours, that was when he started imagining himself and this hidden woman together. It’s been of some comfort over the years, especially when he was weak and powerless and completely alone. The gross domesticity of the scenes that play before him is the kind he outwardly mocks when coming upon it in the world. Inwardly, he cannot help but recognize how cozy they are, how safe, like an oasis in the dead center of an impassable wasteland.

Recently, this woman has become less of a ghostly comfort and more of a nuisance. The violence inherent to his schemes clashes terribly with the idea of comfortable familiarity. His family, from the beginning, has been the shuddering masses of the fearlings, the deep shadows of night, the creeping emptiness of an impartial and silent universe. And not long after the victory at Burgess, the family expands.

His shadows have indeed invaded the town so thoroughly that it’s sapping the life right out of the atmosphere. The trees of the nearby forest will not recover their leaves in spring for at least five years. Incidents of bullying between children rise and become more aggressive. The reality is that these children already despised each other before he took over; they just weren’t giving themselves permission to act upon their instincts.

Through these acts, through the insomnia, through the confidence boost to a minority of factually ignorant, yet loudly persistent adults, more concentrated shadows emerge from the darkness. Two more Nightmare Men appear mere weeks after Burgess falls, and Pitch spends most of his time asserting his will over them. Quickly, they rise to become his right hands.

Burgess is a resilient community of believers, no doubt bolstered by the brats Frost drafted to his side when they first clashed, as well as their offspring. They remain steadfast, but their spirits will break eventually, even if he cannot hope to quash their belief. They will be afraid, cry for the Guardians to help them, but nobody will come.

It’s about time they learn the humiliating emptiness of a cry for help that no one cares to answer.

Some time passes, his forces grow even stronger, his influence blossoms across the world like sores springing up on dying skin. Like the black eyes that barely fade from the faces of Frost’s believers’ grandchildren before new ones are slammed back onto them. It’s brutal. It’s ugly. It’s a sign he’s on the right trajectory.

_She peers up at him through her eyelashes, grinning and stretching out her neck where a bruise rises. He licks his lips, breathing out in excitement and disbelief that he could ever be allowed to have this._

Pitch is in his private balcony when he has to double over a small table to catch his breath. That is far more vivid a vision than he’s had in years, and possibly the most… potent he’s ever experienced. He can feel the flush travel up his body and cloud his mind. He deliberately slows his breathing, trying to remain in control. How humiliating. He cracks open his eyes and checks to see if any of his soldiers are watching. Most are gone, out ravaging the nights. Only one Nightmare Man remains behind, looming silently in a dark corner, faced away from Pitch. The other fearlings and nightmares play their rowdy games with each other, ignoring everything else.

He tries to will the feeling away, but the woman’s image is still lingering behind his eyelids. Pitch leans against the wall with one arm, reaching for himself with the other. Upon contact with his fingertips, he shudders in relief. He closes his eyes and tries to recall the vision as he strokes himself in slow, calculated motions. His free hand twitches, trying to grab something, to make contact with anothers’ warm skin. There is only himself.

His breathing picks up as the woman’s face fills his vision. She’s beautiful, enticing, so alluring that he’s amazed it’s been this long. But as he tries to rove his mind’s eye over her, he still cannot see her at once in her entirety. She starts to fade from his mind, and he grunts and thrusts desperately, trying to finish before it’s all gone. But he can never keep these visions for long, and she’s nearly faded yet again. And then a different, far more solid face enters his mind.

Pitch lets out a harsh, ragged sigh as the vivid, nigh-tangible memory of the spirit pressed against the tree appears. Their cries, their lustful eyes under their mussed hair, the taste of their skin. He has to catch himself against the wall again as his knees threaten to give. He strokes faster, squeezing himself at the base to last just a little longer.

Their hips against his hand. Tearing at their tunic. Their taut skin under his teeth and the mark he made damn sure to give them.

The way they moaned and warbled his name like a new morning songbird reciting a prayer to the dawn.

He just manages to keep the shout of pleasure in his throat as his whole body shudders and buckles. He lowers himself to his knees, leaning his sweaty forehead against the cool, dark wall. His robes are soaking, and as the flush starts to leave his body, he shivers. Another wave of orgasm chases through him, and a small groan falls from his mouth.

He stays there for a long moment, letting himself cool down and regain his composure. Eventually, he pushes himself off the floor. He does his best not to stumble to the nearby washbasin, instead to glide over to it as if this were nothing but routine. He wipes his hands off and splashes some fresh water across his face. He doesn’t have to check the mirror to know that he looks like a mess. But though he’s wracked with residual waves of pleasure, there’s still something deeply unsatisfactory about the results. Even after that indulgence, he is still cold and alone among entire armies’ worth of fearlings.

These fearlings, he suddenly notices, are all looking towards him. The level of noise is much lower than usual, even for as few beings as there are in this space. The Nightmare Man by the entrance is the only one not moved to low cackles. Pitch gives them the coldest glare he can manage under the circumstances, and he steps into the shadows to elsewhere.

Elsewhere happens to be the spirit’s woods. Pitch instinctively steps from the tree there, blinks, and then realizes where’s he’s been drawn yet again. He’s about to head straight back, when the voices of the Guardians echo from the clearing.

“No, they’re just gone,” the Tooth Fairy says to North. For once, she’s standing still, her shoulders drooping. “The gave us the slip in the trees.”

“You do not think we came on too strong?” he replies. “Some spirits are a little intimidated by us, perhaps.”

The ground opens up around one of his feet, and the Cossack behemoth shouts as he sinks up to his hip in the hole. The rabbit pops out of another one just next to it and chuckles at his stuck friend. He then leans over to help him up, tapping his foot to release North’s leg. The two play-threaten each other for a moment before Toothiana smacks them both on the back of their heads.

“This is serious! If what Sandy says is true, then they’re in real danger the longer we don’t have them,” she says. “And after feeling their raw power myself, I can safely say _we’re_ in danger.”

Pitch keys in immediately.

The rabbit nods. “Yeah, of course. I felt it too. Can’t wait for next Easter to pull off some of these ideas. Powerful stuff in the right hands.”

“Just as powerful in the wrong ones.” Toothiana looks at her hands and flexes her arms. A flash passes over her eyes and she immediately starts barking orders to her fairies.

Pitch sighs to himself. He watches the buffoons chat it out for awhile before slipping deeper into the woods. He’s not sure how far or how long he walks; the moon still shines in the dark sky. After awhile, though, he gets the distinct feeling that something is watching him.

He spins around. He sees nothing, but he’s a master of this sort of game. Pitch melds into the deepest shadows he can find, skittering from one to the other until he runs himself dizzy. He exits them, remaining hidden against a tree. Waiting. Sure enough, a whisper comes.

“Pitch,” the Sandman says.

He floats down through the canopy where he’s seemingly been hiding his glow. He flares up, trying to shed the area of shadows. Pitch squeezes himself as far as he can into the deepest recesses of the dark. The Sandman’s light dies down a bit, and he speaks again.

“Kozmotis? Are you Kozmotis again?”

Pitch has no idea what he’s talking about. But the genuine concern in the Sandman's whispers piques his interest. He waits for Sandy to keep going, but the spirit goes back to his practiced silence.

“Help.”

Another voice echoes at the edge of his hearing. He knows this voice. Pitch perks up, his heart skipping a beat. He searches the shadows, but doesn’t see the spirit, only hears the light sound drift farther down a path. He steps from the protection of the tree in that direction. He hears the Sandman exclaim, “Pitch!” behind him, but he’s already fading into the shadows, following the repeated call of “Help… Help...”

“Pitch! Kozmotis, wait!”

Pitch hopes the poor spirit doesn’t hurt himself, shouting like that.

He darts down the shadow paths, compelled to follow the voice he’s come to know so well. He finds himself not so much moving of his own accord, but merely letting something pull him that way. Finally, he finds himself in the dense treeline surrounding a small pool of water. A moonbeam shines through a hole in the canopy. This is the site of his failed experiment.

The spirit sits with their feet in the water, back against their pet, which curls around them. They hold out their hand, and tiny, dark crystalline clusters rise and fade into the night air. They sigh and settle down, placing one hand on Kidra and gently petting them.

Pitch takes a step forward. Kidra immediately bolts upright and turns their ears his direction. He freezes. The spirit jumps to their feet, bow already strung, an arrow in their hands. They draw the bow and aim in the direction Kidra looks. Then find his glowing gaze. The tension melts out of their body, and they ease up on their weapon. But Pitch notices they do not let go of it.

“Hello again,” he says, dropping to Kozmotis’s voice.

They inhale sharply at the sound and exhale shakily. They slowly shut their eyes and shiver.

He continues, “It’s been a bit, hasn’t it?”

They nod. Kidra swings an ear over to them and shifts in place.

“Did you call me here?”

“Do you regret anything you’ve done?” They’re trying to hold back tears. “In your whole life, do you regret any of it?”

Pitch is silent for a long moment. He regrets overestimating himself throughout the years; that has led to a lot of loneliness and personal suffering. He regrets his arrogance during the weak years, when he tried to regain his power by himself with no help. He regrets isolating himself and taking centuries to successfully corrupt the dreamsand due to his angry outbursts at each failure.

“Some of it,” he answers. “But not what I did to sustain myself.”

They leave Kidra’s side and make their way to the trees. They still do not fully lower their weapon. Six feet from him, they stop and point from themself to him.

They ask, “How much of it was a lie?”

“More than I wish. But nowhere near the whole thing. Not the important part.”

They step closer. He can see their eyes dart across the darkness concealing him, searching over his form, eventually resting again on his eyes.

"If you had a choice, would you have done this differently?"

"I don't think anyone would willingly choose the fate I've been dealt."

They step even closer. “Then why do it this way?”

He can’t answer for a moment. Soft starts and stops escape his mouth. They step closer, finally lowering their bow, letting the arrow fall from the string. They reach out blindly, and Pitch tries to move back, but they catch the front of his robes in one hand. Their other finds his hand in the dark.

“Why, you ask?” he finally says.

They nod.

“To start it was for the obvious reasons: it served the greater purpose of my plans. Then, it was because _I_ wanted to… just be near someone else who tolerated me. After awhile, I could neither keep myself away, nor could I find a way to admit what I actually was.” He hovers his hand over the one on his robes, but can’t bring himself to touch them. He shakes his head. “You know _what_ I am. You _know_ —”

“I know damn well _who_ you are,” they reply.

Slowly, they walk backwards, pulling him from the darkness of the trees. Their eyes never leave his. Gently, gingerly, softly—though he tries to resist—the spirit leads him into the stark light of the moon. Kozmotis becomes Pitch Black right before their eyes, and there is no more hiding.

The spirit lifts his hand and places it on their cheek, leaving a small kiss on his palm. They close their eyes and sigh as they lean into the touch. Pitch finally clasps his hand over the one on his robe, lacing his fingers through theirs. He runs his hand down their face until he cups their chin, raising it slightly. The spirit opens their eyes. They gaze at him from under their eyelashes, their lips parting.

“Might I ask you why?” he asks. “Why trust me again? Why make yourself an enemy of the Guardians?”

“I’m tired of being alone when I’m surrounded by others. I’m tired of being pulled along on someone else’s schedule,” They’re quiet for a moment, reach into their pocket, and produce the photo for a moment. They squeeze his hand. “But, if you wouldn’t kidnap me just on the basis of enhancing your power, I think I can trust you enough.”

“And what if I’m lying even now?”

They look up at him, craning their neck and getting closer. They just shrug and say, “This is probably the first time in either of my lives that I’ve been sure about a choice.”

He watches them for a moment, and then slowly leans down to them, kissing them. They tangle their fingers into his hair, and push him closer. He in turn wraps both of his arms around them, running his hands over their back and neck, and then coming to rest over their rapidly beating heart.

They break apart and gasp for air. He places his forehead on theirs, looking at them. The stirrings he tried to take care of earlier return, more insistent than ever. Pitch reaches for their belt and tugs at their tunic. They push back into his mouth and reach to their waist. As Pitch desperately drags the fabric bit by bit, there's a small click and the belt falls away, leaving the tunic completely free.

He looks at them, a curious expression on his face. They pant, their face red, and they smile sheepishly. Before he can drag them back to him, they turn their head and whistle. Kidra shakes their head and grumbles, but stalks into the trees.

The spirit looks back at him and then gently peels back his collar, like they had tried before. Pitch dismisses it, leaving the scar completely visible. His spirit winces and reaches out to run a finger over it.

“Augh!” Pitch feigns pain as soon as they touch it. He leans his weight on them, and they guide him to the forest floor, whispering apologies. As soon as they settle down, Pitch pounces, surprising the spirit as he presses them onto their back. He holds himself over them, grinning.

“You bastard,” they mutter, smiling.

Then they look past him to the sky, frowning. Pitch glances up. The sky is graying to morning. Beneath him, the spirit deflates. Pitch looks down at them. He leans down and places a kiss to their forehead, then their cheek, and finally to their lips.

“I’m not going anywhere today,” he says. He moves to their neck, where he bites and sucks his way up to their ear. His spirit whines. He pins them by their wrists and shoves his knee between their legs. “Especially not when I’ve finally got you where I’ve wanted you for a long, long while.”


	13. La Petit Mort

Your arms are trapped yet again, this time in a grip you’ve been craving for most of the last year. Pitch grins wickedly as he leans over you, and then slowly moves his hips against yours. You can feel his hardening erection against your thigh, and it has been so, so long. You once again hook a leg around him to try and bring him closer.

He gasps and moans before diving down to your neck again. He bites down, hard, and increases his pace against you without letting go. He releases one of your hands and traces his way across your body, down to the edge of your tunic. He slips it under your clothes and runs his touch up your hips, over your stomach until he finally kneads your breast. You wrap your free hand through his hair and drag him away from your neck to crash your faces together again.

He shoves his tongue into your mouth and you moan around it as he rocks against you. With every motion, your clit rubs against his knee. But it’s not enough… just not close enough. You grab his wrist from under your tunic and move it down, needing him to touch you.

Pitch yanks out of your grasp and slams your hand back down onto the forest floor. He removes himself from your mouth and slowly sets his smoldering, lust-filled gaze upon you. He smiles and shakes his head.

“I’ll get to it,” he growls. “But I will take the time we haven’t had before to get there.”

He moves your arm until he’s captured both in one hand, and then he starts slowly, agonizingly taking off your sparse armor. One leather pauldron. The second. Your cloak goes next, and he briefly lifts you up to spread it under you. He has trouble with the strap crossing your chest with just his one hand. He smirks up at you as he leans down and finishes unlatching it with his teeth. He nuzzles against your breasts, laving his tongue over where the nipples are underneath your clothing. You whine. The hot damp soaks through just enough to have them peaking, dragging against the fabric as you twitch and try to get more.

Pitch suddenly hauls you up from the ground to a sitting position. Too quick for you to react, he drags your tunic over your head, so that only your arms are still in the sleeves. He then wraps the loose fabric around your arms a few times, trapping them behind you and leaving your torso bare and exposed. He trails his eyes up and down your body, pupils dilating, breathing getting heavier and less controlled.

He slowly brings a hand up to your cheek, and as you lean in to his palm, he carefully runs his thumb over your lips and says, “Is this all right?”

“Yes,” you whisper hoarsely. “Yes, yes!”

“Good.”

He leans you back down. He licks a thin line across your collarbone, one end to the other. From there, he slowly works his way down, alternating between gently kissing your skin and biting a trail of hickeys over your chest, shoulders, and stomach. The marks on your neck would be hard enough to hide—if you had anyone to answer to anymore. But you have no intention of covering these up.

He barely brushes your nipples with his lips, circling each peak until the feather touches become too much and you try to arch against him to make him commit to his tease. He pulls back, though, and moves to another spot to lick and mark. You thud your head back down, close your eyes, and grunt in frustration, trying to get back any of the friction you’d had on your clit earlier when he was frotting his way to an early finish.

As you get into a rhythm, whining because it still isn’t _enough,_ you feel his mouth close around your nipple and suck. Your eyes shoot open as you gasp at the contact, but as you try to sit up, a firm hand holds you down by your shoulder.

He glances up at you, meeting your eye. He grunts and jerks his hips against yours as you make eye contact. The movements get faster again, almost erratic, and he pulls away from your chest to just focus on thrusting his throbbing cock against your thigh again.

“Kozmotis!” you keen, still trying to get some relief. “Please…”

He stops abruptly, panting, hands on your hips twitching. His eyes are closed, and his forehead is creased. He cracks open one eye and looks at you curiously. 

“Pitch. I’m sorry… Pitch.”

He runs a hand over his head, wiping away the sweat that has worked its way there. He sits up, straddling you.

“It’s going to take awhile to get used to the other name. I’m sorry,” you say again.

Pitch raises one hand to your lips, saying, “Shh… I don’t actually hate that name.” He rubs small circles at your hip, smiling softly. “I’ve heard you moan it before… and I wouldn’t refuse to hear it again.”

You grin and whisper, “Koz…”

He shivers and doubles over until his forehead rests on your shoulder, panting again. Before he can move away again, you lean down and grab the edge of his robe in your mouth. You pull as best as you can and take it off of his shoulder, fully exposing the mark covering his shoulder, as well as half of his bare chest. You lean in quickly and lick over the mark, but he moves just out of reach.

He fully removes his robes as he stares you directly in the eyes, and your arms jerk reflexively behind you, still trapped in the tunic. He tosses the robes to the side, trails his fingers up your spine, and presses your body against his. He sighs. His skin is cooler than yours, but the skin-to-skin contact, pressing on every square inch that you can get near, is so relieving.

“Pi—Koz—Please!” You moan as he holds you close.

He gently licks your ear, running his teeth across it as he gets a hold of your hair and pulls your head to the side. Your hips jerk up again. Pitch drags his tongue down your neck, across your collarbone, over your breast, and then to your stomach. And he moves so slowly, so slowly, pausing every time you try to get more leverage and pressure where you desperately want it, checking occasionally to make sure you’re watching him go so agonizingly slow. He lifts your hips off the ground and squeezes your bottom as he gets closer and closer.

It feels like hours are going by, and just as you can’t wait anymore and whine his name, he curls his fingers into the waist of your pants and tugs them off. You gasp at how cool the air feels on you now that you’re exposed, and you clench. He pulls them all the way off your legs and tosses your knees over his shoulders. You thrash against your bindings, just wanting to shove his head down to your clit and get on with it, but he splays his hand across your stomach and licks from your stomach down to your inner thigh where he leaves another sharp bite. You inhale sharply and cross your ankles behind his head, drawing him the least bit closer. He shudders and pants.

“Koz, I swear to God if you don’t—if you don’t get a _fucking_ move on with this—”

And you cry out as he presses his tongue to your clit, taking a long lick against it and holding your hips as close as he can. He wraps his lips around it and sucks. You throw your head back and scream silently. Despite how hard they’re shaking, you try to cross your ankles even more, needing more, wanting more. He keeps licking and sucking, humming against you, spasming every now and then as you strain to whisper, “Koz… Kozmotis… Pitch!”

Everything builds and builds. You close your eyes, trying to focus on just the feeling of his arms wrapped around your legs, every twitch across his skin, and the hot, wet tongue lapping against you. You silently thank whoever it was in his past who taught him how to do this. Firm and concentrated in mostly one spot. Eager. Getting faster and more insistent the more you whine and call his name. 

And when Pitch presses his tongue from the bottom of your slit back to your clit, the pressure peaks and your orgasm makes you shudder, squeezing your thighs together until you can feel him panting frantically against you.

Your body twitches a few times all over, and you shiver, still gasping for air. Suddenly, your legs are being torn from around his head and you’re dropped onto your back as Pitch fiddles with his own pants. He fumbles a few times, unable to get a grip while his hands shake. He slams his fists on the ground for a second, half laughing, half growling in frustration. He looks at you.

“Trust me I’d love to help, but…” You shrug, indicating the tunic he himself tied you up in.

He smiles, and finally manages to get them off. He leans over you again, hand on either side of your head, gently rubbing himself against your folds. He tries to hold a determined and self-assured expression, but fails as soon as he looks into your eyes, and he grunts and jerks against you desperately, cock twitching. He takes one more moment to lean his sweaty forehead against yours and plant a long kiss to your mouth before saying, “No more waiting.”

He guides himself into you. As you stretch around him, he holds your face in his hands, watching with a fiery expression as he pushes in. As soon as he hilts himself, his eyes roll up into his head, and he drops his head to your shoulder. He sits there a moment and wraps his arms around you. You curl your neck up and place a gentle kiss on his shoulder.

He thrusts. You lightly run your teeth over his neck. He thrusts and moans your name. He picks up the pace, grunting as he pulls back and thrusts back in over and over again. He holds your head to his neck, whining. You lick from his shoulder to his jaw, tracing your way back and forth until you reach the crook of his neck and bite.

He screams your name, and it echoes through the brightening forest. He sits up, grabs your hips and slams himself into you over and over, whispering your name with each thrust. It’s not much longer after that he slams erratically into you one more time. He shudders over you, his legs and arms twitching as he comes in you.

He nearly falls on top of you, just managing to catch himself with one hand before he crushes you. He slips out of you, and the both of you just lay there, panting and kissing, until a sunbeam makes its way through the trees. It his Pitch’s shoulder first, and he hisses.

He sits up, bringing you with him until you're sitting in his lap. He reaches around you, untangles your tunic from your arms, and slips it all the way off them. Placing the tunic down beside you, he takes one of your arms in his hands.

“Are you all right?” he asks, starting to massage your arm slowly up and down.

“Better than perfect,” you reply.

He makes sure to pay attention to your shoulder sockets, elbows, and wrists. They are sore and stiff, but you wouldn’t trade it for what had just happened. After a few minutes, he moves to the other, and you slowly twist and turn your arm to finish stretching it back into shape. Once satisfied with his work, Pitch takes your hand and kisses your knuckles. You reach over, finally able to take his face in your hands, and you draw him back into a quick kiss.

The two of you put your pants back on and stretch out on your cloak in the most shaded area you can find. You lay there, cuddling in the afterglow for what seems like hours. Kidra eventually stalks back and sits themself down by the water. They keep their head raised, twirling their ears in all directions. You sigh in Pitch’s arms, and he strokes your hair.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“You will never know peace once _they_ get wind of this.”

You shrug and lace your fingers through his.

“Whatever happens next will happen. I have a whole eternity ahead of me of things happening. So I’m not too worried about it.”

Pitch smiles and holds you closer. You want to get a move on, just in case the Guardians are on your trail already. You may be quite a ways away from your lab, but it’s still the same forest. But he combs his fingers through your hair, sighs against your neck, and you relax again. There is time. There is more than enough time for this.

You almost find yourself drifting off when Pitch sits up and mutters, “What’s that?”

You hear Kidra making noises by the water, and you start to untangle yourself from Pitch to see. Suddenly, a deep swirl of shadow opens under you and him. You start sinking. He grabs you and holds out a hand, trying to control it. For a moment, the swirl starts to recede. And then it regrows exponentially.

Pitch grasps you closer, looking around furiously to see what’s causing this. You try and lean over to grab your quiver and bow, and then you see a bunch of fearlings appear in the clearing. They cry out angrily as the sunbeams hit them, and they try to slip into the shadows of the canopy. A few gather your things, leering at you.

“What is the meaning of this!” Pitch yells over your shoulder.

You turn to see what he’s looking at, and you freeze. Three horrific beings loom over you—too tall, too slender to be human, even if they have all the right basic limbs. You press yourself closer to Pitch.

“Explain yourselves!” he demands.

“Distracted… Again…”

You can’t tell if one or all of them are speaking, and you start trembling, terror removing any contentment you’d had only seconds ago. Shadows and black sand arc up around you, crashing down. You feel an odd pulling sensation, and everything goes dark.


	14. The Shadow Realm

The shadows encasing Pitch and the spirit whirl around them and then fall away only to reveal more darkness. He recognizes it, though, as his own lair, and he and his spirit are on their knees in the middle of it. A contingent of fearlings surrounds them, and soon after, the Nightmare Men appear. They close in as a heady hit of fear suddenly spirals outward. Pitch inhales it, feeling its power course through him, giving him a boost of energy and strength. He grins and looks around for the source, and then, confused, looks down.

His spirit is frozen in his arms. They shrink, trying to cover their bare torso, pressing themself closer to his. They look up at him, the whites of their eyes fully visible. With their poor eyesight, they can probably only barely see his form, and his fearlings will be nothing but moving masses of black. They look for his eyes, but recoil slightly when they find them hungry and eager.

The pool of fear within them bubbles and spills over, and the first image tearing through their mind, striking at their heart, is his warped visage.

The fearlings close in further, death rattle laughter echoing over the dark walls and crashing into each other over and over again. It becomes claustrophobic, and the spirit starts to hyperventilate, any calming techniques they learned from their doctors falling apart among his element.

 _No. No, no,_ Pitch says to himself. _Not this time._

“No,” he commands. The swarm of fearlings pauses, but then advances more. Pitch yells, “I said no!”

 _Forgive me, my love._ He draws upon the wave of fear coming from the spirit and gathers up the shadows around him. The spirit gives a strangled cry, and they dig their fingernails into his shoulder. The fearlings stop in their tracks, watching and twitching. Pitch takes a deep breath, draws a little more upon the energy, restraining himself just enough to not give way to it, and he redirects that power right back upon them. He dismisses waves of fearlings in one go, and the remainder stay back.

Pitch rises from his knees, dragging the spirit up with him. They’re unstable on their legs, trembling and exhausted. Pitch carefully leans them against the wall, and, glaring at his forces until they back up again, he snatches their cloak from where it had been transported with them. He turns back to the spirit and wraps the cloak around them so that they’re decent. They grab the edges of the cloth and pull it closed. He leans down and places a kiss on their forehead.

“I’m sorry for this. But rest assured, I will keep you safe.” He stands in front of them them, arms stretched out in a barrier, and again glares at his legions, raising his voice and saying, “You shall _not_ touch a single hair on their head! You shall _not_ bring harm or injury to them! They are _mine_ and _I_ will have them as _I_ see fit!”

He takes one more look at his armies. “Bring their things to my chambers right away.”

He glares especially at the Nightmare Men, who have been unmoved throughout this whole ordeal. They are simply silent. Pitch wraps an arm around the spirit’s shoulder and grasps their wrist, holding them up as he starts to lead them to his chambers in silence.

*************

The darkness presses in on you. You shake from head to toe, and terrible images and memories flood your mind. Your spouse flailing as they choke when their throat swells up. Your son running through the dark woods, screaming for you as trees fly to splinters behind him. The board meeting where you sit in compliant, even eager, silence as the CEO shows you all the new branding for the dieting sweetener they’re shoving through to manufacturing, despite the federal food safety councils—all of them—rejecting each and every iteration you worked overtime to concoct on the basis of false claims and un-replicable results.

Pitch Black, invading your dreams and taunting you with your ghosts.

Pitch Black, holding you and dragging his finger over you, threatening to kidnap you and use you for his own gains.

Pitch Black, driving Jack Frost out of his own home and unleashing an incalculable wave of nightmares and fear upon an innocent, sleepy town.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Please hold on. We’re almost there.”

Pitch Black whispers to you as he leads you down deeply shadowed corridors. You can barely focus on moving your legs one in front of the other across floor you cannot see. Behind you, you can hear the skittering of fearlings and feel their presence. You think you hear them laughing, but it may just be the memories. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Either way, you’re barely holding yourself from a full-on breakdown. The paralyzing fear pumping to every extremity in your body is the only thing keeping you from sobbing and screaming just yet.

Finally, he leads you over the threshold of a room. It’s still cold, but warmer than the hallway. The echoes of your footsteps are dampened here. Pitch leads you over to a nearly invisible bench and sits you down. He runs a hand over your cheek and presses his forehead to yours. You can just barely see his the edges of his silhouette, but you definitely see his glowing eyes. They’re hardened and angry, glimmering at the edges. They’re still the eyes of the man you fell in love with, and as you watch them, you find your breath slowing.

They leave your side. You try to reach out and grab him, but he slips out of your grasp and walks away. He stops over about the place where you entered the room, and you hear the swipe and jingle of clothes being snatched out of something’s hands.

“Retrieve candles. Dozens of them. And matches to light them with.”

You involuntarily flinch at Pitch’s voice, but as the taller, nightmarish creatures reply, you feel as if you’re being held under deep water, the surface miles above you, your breath running out and making your chest ache.

“Next… Target…”

“We can discuss that in time. For the immediate future, I will be here attending to—”

“Now…”

“How _dare_ you! I am the King of Nightmares! You shall do my bidding on my schedule!”

A moan rises and rises until it’s no longer a sound, but a feeling of despair permeating everything. You start trembling, and your vision narrows until you focus on a small point across the room, though you cannot gauge the depth properly.

_N-O-W_

The sensation recedes, but it leaves you choking on your own shivers. There’s a pause before Pitch whispers again.

“Th-thirty minutes. I will be there in thirty minutes.”

“Thirty… Minutes…” the being responds.

The Nightmare Man slowly creeps away, and as it leaves, the darkness lets up a little. Still not enough for you to see properly, but the basic shapes of the furniture and items decorating the room become slightly more visible. You hear movement, and look up to see glowing eyes rushing back to you. You recoil and tense, and they stop for a moment, advancing again slowly.

Pitch kneels in front of you, places your clothes on the bench and takes your hands in his. He kisses one.

“Are you all right? Please… Please tell me you’re all right.”

You struggle to focus on his eyes, and lean down so far that you slide off the bench. He catches you and holds you in his arms, wrapping one arm around your still-bare waist under the cloak and combing his fingers through your hair. At some point, he's replaced his robes, and you feel them brush against your arms. You bury your face in his neck, trying to ground yourself. He lets you sit for awhile like that, and then he gently pulls your face up to just in front of his to kiss you.

“Please answer me,” he whispers, voice cracking, tracing his thumb over your lips.

You manage a small smile and wrap your arms around him, reaching for the texture of his short hair and the coolness of his skin. He starts to run his fingers up your spine. He’s there, he has you, and you have not fallen into nothingness.

“I’m scared,” you finally whisper. Something catches in Pitch’s throat. You try to look around, squinting against the dark. “Where’s Kidra? Where am I?”

“You’re—” his breath hitches and he tries again. “You’re in my lair. The… My… We were brought here involuntarily. I would much rather still be laying in the forest with you.”

He runs his lips over your neck to demonstrate, and you moan a little and move closer to him.

“Kidra—?”

“They’re back in the forest, as far as I can tell.” He leans his face against yours, and you feel something wet brush your cheek. He squeezes his eyes shut and holds you as tight as he can.

“I promise you,” he says, “that you will not be harmed here. I’m not sure what’s gotten into my troops, but they will be disciplined.”

“I’m tired.”

“I know. But please keep holding on. Do not fall asleep here, not until it’s safe.” You nod vaguely, but he holds your face and looks directly into your eyes. “I mean that. _Do. Not. Fall. Asleep._ Not this close to the fearlings.”

You blink rapidly, drawing yourself back into a firm focus, searching his eyes.

“I promise,” you say. “No sleeping.”

Pitch sighs in relief. He sits there for the next few minutes, holding you, whispering and pressing kisses across your neck and face. But eventually, a fearling appears and summons him away. Pitch helps you sit on the bench and gives you one last, long kiss. You grab on to his robe and try to pull him back.

“I will be back soon. I promise,” he says, removing your hand and disappearing into the darkness.

*************

He slips out into the dark corridors and allows the fearling to lead him to the war room, where a mass of fearlings and the three Nightmare Men surround the plans for conquering the world. Pitch takes his place at the head of the table, and the creatures lean in. He tries to clear his throat, but stumbles over his first words. He shakes his head; he’s still worried about the spirit. A death rattle starts rising from the Nightmare Men, and Pitch closes his eyes.

He is the King of Nightmares. He is the Boogeyman. He exists to feed on the fear and horror of the world, to sustain himself and to grow his armies. Fear is an inevitability, the naked truth of existence. As the stories go, when Pandora opened the box, only one small part of it contained anything other than deceit, trickery, anxiety, and lies. And that small glimpse of hope was still locked away, unable to truly stamp out the existential absolutes.

He reluctantly pushes his worry out of his mind, and when he opens his eyes, he’s standing up straight, glaring down at everything. He begins.

“Burgess was a complete success, and the intervening months have only seen us grow more powerful. We are ready for a second strike against the Guardians. Ready to dispel another disgusting chunk of their belief.”

As he speaks with this intensity, he quickly relaxes back into the familiar cadence of a general. He does not ask his armies questions, he commands their attention and instructs them. The deference the fearlings show him again is relieving. He is in control, has always been in control. This is why he does this. It’s why he was made.

“The next logical targets are either the rabbit’s Warren or the fairy’s Palace. Easter is not too far ahead of us that we should discount the potential for disrupting the belief, especially as I’ve seen its effectiveness before.

“Likewise, the last time I attempted this sort of coup, destroying the Tooth Palace and taking the teeth almost shattered the Guardians in that instant. They have long reserves of belief, but it is not infinite.

“They have learned much since my last attempts, however, and will not be so easily surprised again. However…” He looks around the room. “I had only just perfected my nightmare sand at the time, and I did not have you all here to help me.”

Pitch leans over and taps two parts of the ratty world map: India and Australia. He summons some black sand and creates markers surrounding both territories. He then creates images of a boiling river and piles of tooth boxes. He starts to grin, feeling comfortable again as he watches the cogs turn in his plans.

“We shall make a double strike with the intention of hindering their power. There will be a takeover of each eventually, yes, but we must first focus on weakening what we can. Our goals are twofold:

“One—we must kill spring where it originates. The Warren is a massive, organic facility with networks all over to take hope and relief to humans. But if we can corrupt it at its source, then even as the seasons turn, spring will not come. For the northern hemisphere, this means that the sun will not shine as brightly, and flowers will not bloom so brilliantly. There will be no new beginning to wipe away the bleakness of winter. For the southern hemisphere, this means that the long days will feel endless and empty and repetitive, and the darkness of winter will be a relief. There will be nothing but recursive false hopes blending one into the next. And as the planet revolves around the sun, so will these attributes switch places, in a cycle of endless angst.”

He grins as he manipulates the sand to show people cowering and begging for mercy. There are few more effective ways to overtake the mind than to dangle routine in front of someone in the midst of upheaval. Oh, hope has a place in his plans, all right. It will be a promise unkept again and again until no one believes it exists, even if some should appear in front of them.

“Two—we must prevent new memories from prevailing. Memories are small stories people can tell each other to impart lessons or grow sympathy. Cut off access to the stories, and you can prevent truth from being truthful. Humans are so subject to the whims of their memories that they can forget what is true and what is false. And as children fail to remember anything good in their lives, they grow into adults who have never had anything good happen to them, and then believe this is just how life is. How it’s always been. Miserable.

“But speaking of stories...”

Pitch taps the general area where he knows Ganderly is. The home and library of Mother Goose, Guardian of Storytelling. He has never quite found the exact spot, but that brat cannot keep it hidden forever.

“Once we have procured the teeth and corrupted spring, we will move to overtake the library. Once we control memories, hope, and stories, we will be in a good position to take the Pole. After that, we will move on to the Sandman’s island, and we will have control over every means the Guardians have of effecting belief.”

Pitch watches the Nightmare Men as he finishes his speech. Their empty faces contort and bulge, and a low laugh starts building through them. Pitch takes it in like it’s beautiful music. He puffs out his chest and puts his hands behind his back.

“We will make our next strike the new moon before Easter. That’s four months from now. The rabbit will be too busy to keep constant watch, and the fairy should be busy roaming around in his stead. Remember, we strike only to corrupt, not yet to take.”

The cheers and wicked laughter roll over him, and he feels pride swell within him. He goes over some the more intricate plotting of the next stage, as well as follows up on the efforts in the rest of the world. After the meeting wraps up, he rushes back to his chambers.

He opens the door to find his spirit among dozens of lit candles. They’re examining some of the trinkets lining the walls when he enters, and they quickly spin around. The low golden light highlights the angles of their face and the sheen of their hair. They’ve gotten their clothes and personal effects back on, and they reach to the quiver at their hip for an arrow before they register it’s him.

He heads over to them and sweeps them into an embrace. He starts to nip at their neck, holding their hips close to his.

“Pitch,” they say, putting their hands against his shoulders.

He takes one of their wrists and brings it to his lips before raking his teeth over it. He backs them up against the wall, extracting a wonderful whimper of surprise from them.

"Yes, love?"

They laugh weakly when he says this, but push against him. He looks at them, confused. But as he truly takes them in, the giddiness that had wormed its way in from playing general again dissipates. The spirit is trembling. Their eyes have full rings of shadows around them, and one twitches occasionally. He remembers: they were brought here against their will by his mutinous army, and the shadows are feeding off their mental state. Pitch suddenly realizes that a fearling must have entered here and set up the candles while he was in the meeting. Everything falls apart so quickly that he feels torn in half.

“I’m… Are you all right?” he says.

They nod. “I’m fine. Better now that I can see, but—”

“Whoever came in here with the candles. It didn’t—It didn’t touch you or harm you did—”

“No, no. But,” they take a deep breath, “I’ve been thinking that I need to tell you something.”

“Of course.” They lead Pitch over to the bench and sit down. He covers their hands with his, looking around to make sure none of his fearlings will disturb them. “What do you need to say?”

“I’m going to tell you about how I died.”


	15. Born of Death

It had been a fairly mundane camping trip you were planning for months. The real variable was whether your spouse would be feeling up to the trip. Ever since the accident five years before, it was more and more difficult for them to get out and about for long. The weekend came, and your partner just looked at you and shook their head sadly.

“I can cancel,” you said. “The woods will still be there next month.”

“Jordan’s been looking forward to this, though,” they replied. “It’s just one weekend, and you could stand to spend a little one-on-one time with him.”

“I’ve… been busy.”

They walked over to you and wrapped their arms around your shoulder.

“I know you have. That’s why you need this trip. You always come back refreshed after a camping trip. You also need to take your mind of work for a second.”

Your job had gotten itself caught up in an inquiry that was lighting up every news channel across the country. A military contract that went a little pear-shaped. But there were so many non-disclosure agreements tied up in it that you honestly didn’t know if you’d be able to give direct, precise answers if someone came to ask you. At the very least, your department had been spared for now, which was a relief because you’d recently been promoted to lead supervisor of the R&D lab. But your direct manager had hinted that someone was going to want to talk to you eventually, given your department’s involvement in the project.

You shrugged in response. It was what it was. Your partner finally cajoled you into going, despite everything.

“Good bye,” you said, kissing your spouse. “Be safe. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” they said, giving you one last tight squeeze.

Soon enough you and your son were traveling out to the campground. You were trying a new spot this time: a forest about twenty-five miles east from your town, separating it from the coastal city. People had been posting in your camping group about the area, saying it was dense and not really a developed ground. But, it was good if you really wanted to get a rougher experience that didn’t involve working around too much swampland or marsh.

You and Jordan pulled up to the small lot set aside for parking, grabbed your packs, and hit the trail. You spent most of the early evening searching for a good place to set up camp before dark fell, finding a mostly even spot in a small clearing between a few trees with lots of strong boughs up and down the trunks. You got a fire going and set up, popping on a lantern as the sun started to disappear.

“So, how was school?” you asked Jordan as you sat down to eat. The ten-year-old didn’t look up from his plate. He just shrugged.

“It was ok. People have been mostly talking about the inquiry this week. Even the teachers.”

“They’re not giving you a hard time, are they?”

“No. Most of them don’t know I’m related to anyone at Kinetics & Chem.” He finally looked at you. “What exactly is going on? The news keeps saying that the company had something to do with an attack?”

You mulled it over for a bit as your chewed your food. Again, there was only so much you could tell anyone. You ended up saying, “The military came and asked us to develop a mixture they could use in their work. We did as they asked, and it was all them and their decisions from there.”

“You made them a poisonous chemical mixture?”

You nearly choked on your bite. After a small coughing fit, you said, “They asked us to—I can’t say much because of the contract.” You shook your head. “Anything in big enough amounts can be poisonous. Sugar, protein, vitamin C. Even _water_ can kill you if you drink too much, and we need that to live.

“We weren’t asked to create poison. But depending on how they used it, it could have been poisonous if they did it wrong.”

He didn’t look convinced. “But you still made it for them?”

“I was just doing my job,” you replied. You were both silent for a moment. “C’mon, let’s set up the range.”

You spent a much better time together doing a bit of archery. Jordan had thought about joining a team, even floated the possibility of the Olympics when he was older. He was at that age where kids had ten thousand dream careers every day, but there were a few things he was consistent about: camping and hiking, video games, and telling stories. All of which you tried to encourage in him as he grew.

The other week, you’d caught him tossing a notebook across his room into his wall as he yelled in frustration. When he saw you in his doorway, he cringed and apologized. You’d just gotten home and wanted nothing more than to shower and take of your shoes, but you picked up the book and sat down with him.

“So, what’s gotcha like this?”

“I’m trying to make my own game but coding is stupid.”

You opened the notebook and were met with pages of numbers and parentheses and semicolons, about a quarter of it scratched out and rewritten several times. Your eyes swam at it all; you’d had exactly one computer science class in college, and you accepted that C- with pride at the end of the semester. Near the foot of Jordan’s bed, you saw a coding book with a library barcode on it.

“Well… maybe you’re just looking at it the wrong way.” You pointed at the book. “Show me what you’re trying to do.”

He launched into this winding speech about statements and pointed to several places in the book. You struggled to keep up, wondering if your partner had a better grasp of this sort of thing, but then Jordan said something.

“I’m trying to learn as much of it as I can before I have to return the book, but I can’t keep up with all the moving parts.”

At that, you had an idea. You leaped up and scrambled through every cabinet and all the school supplies until you’d gathered every index card you could find. You dumped everything in front of him and plopped yourself on the floor. He looked up at you strangely.

“So let’s break it down. One—copy some code onto the index cards. Two—move them around bit by bit until you’ve got them in an order you understand. Three—make as many or as few cards of different kinds so you can write as much code as you need for practice.”

You hoped this would work, at least for the bare basics. Jordan then spent the next hour or so writing code bits out and stringing them together in different forms, comparing the orders to what the book recommended. By the time you’d gotten changed and through dinner, he was a lot happier, and his focus was reignited. He spent the next week or so doing that every day after school. You hoped he’d never lose that drive, and that he’d strive to approach things from whatever creative angle he needed to.

Eventually, you two bedded down for the night. Jordan collapsed first, victim of a sugar crash. You were up a little longer, making sure to tie up the food and put out the fire. As you were slowly pouring water over the fire pit, you heard something growl and dash through the dark forest nearby. Immediately, your anxiety took over, and all you could imagine were bears, coyotes, pumas, and warped versions of other creatures. You grabbed your bow and quiver, and stood there, squinting through the darkness to try and see what it was. At the same time, you took several deep breaths and reminded yourself that anxiety lied. You’d never really stopped believing in magic, but only because your vivid imagination constantly dropped nightmares into your mind along with the whispers of “What if…?”

You stood there for a few more minutes before finally finishing up your work, crawling into the tent, and pulling the sleeping bag up to your face. You eventually fell asleep, but when your alarm rang the next morning, you woke up exhausted. A cup of over-roasted coffee perked you right up, and you and Jordan packed for a longer hike.

You spent the day hiking over the gentle slopes, watching the local wildlife, and trying not to splash through the marshy lowlands too much. At noon, you stopped to eat and refresh.

“Did you hear that weird growl last night?” Jordan asked. “Do you think it was a bear or something?”

“I did hear something.” you said, insides going a little cold. “I… honestly I thought I made it up. You know how my mind gets to me sometimes.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He got a wry look on his face. “I sure do know that.”

You let his sarcasm roll off your back. This was supposed to be a fun weekend where the two of you bonded and experienced new things. Despite his smart remark, you saw that he still looked a little worried.

“Hey, Jordan.” He looked over to you, eyebrow raised. “Don’t worry about any creatures going bump in the night. I’ve got you covered.”

He grinned and nodded.

You puttered around the forest a little longer and mapped out a few interesting looking places to come back to next time. Hopefully, your partner would be up for it. You headed back in mid-afternoon, and it was sunset again by the time you reached the clearing again. You and Jordan threw jabs back and forth as you cooked dinner and fixed up a few things. By the time the stars started peeking out, the two of you were full and telling ghost stories as you stoked the fire.

“And when they finally worked up the nerve to enter the cabin, they found him on the bed. His gut was ripped open and his face lay back, frozen in a silent scream.”

You watched Jordan to make sure he was the appropriate amount of scared, but not absolutely terrified. You were no professional storyteller, but you’d gotten decent over the years of telling your son tales of all kinds. He popped another candy into his mouth and hung on to every single word. The sparkle in his eye let you know he was whipping up his own story to tell as soon as you finished. Which was good; the finale was near.

“As they took in the terrible scene, the hunters heard the wind blow outside. And they swore—though they never told the other for fear of being called crazy—that there was a voice on the wind:

“‘High and low, in and out/I have search the whereabouts/Of one who hunted near and far/And left me with a lingering scar. I tracked the tracker to his home/And now his soul lay in the loam/On display for all to see/The consequence of crossing me.

“The… end.”

Jordan let out a long, slow breath and clapped his hands. You bowed from your chair and set another small branch on the fire. You considered throwing a whole log on, but after today, you both probably wouldn’t be up much longer.

As Jordan cleared his throat and started his ghost story, another echoing, haunting snarl ran through the trees. There was a crack a distance away, and follow up splintering sounds like a tree falling over. You and Jordan jumped up, and you grabbed your bow and quiver again. Jordan reached for his, but you shook your head.

“Go into the tent. I’ll check it out real quick. Hopefully it’s just a rotten tree, and maybe a small animal I can scare off.”

Jordan nodded, but took another few moments until he actually crawled into the tent. You zipped it up all the way and then took a flashlight. You considered taking the lantern for more light, but you really didn’t want to attract whatever was out there. As you moved through the trees, you heard another tree breaking to your side, closer this time. You quickly turned on the flashlight. The beam of light turned on in time for you to see the tall pine falling slowly at an angle. You rushed out of its path, stumbling over rocks and roots, covering your head as the sprawling branches hit the ground.

The next growl came from behind you, followed by a voice.

“I will not have his fiends interrupting my work,” a stern, low, full voice said.

It sounded feminine and cold. Furious and commanding. Ethereal, even. Your mind immediately jumped to eldritch beings—unknowable by your puny understanding. But should you be able to understand them? Your logical mind started its usual fight with your anxious mind.

“H—Hello?” you called. If someone was there, you wanted to give them a chance to identify themselves.

Your only answer was a ripping sound, like pulling a weed out of the ground and tearing the tangled, deep roots out with it. You swiveled the light around in time to catch a fresh mound of dirt that erupted out of the ground and hardened into a spike, almost coming with a foot of your head. Something crashed through it, scattering the soil, but you saw no creature. The thundering footsteps, however, traveled right your way as it made dents in the ground.

You hoped you were dreaming. You had to be. Ghosts in the forest tearing trees up by their roots were for nightmares, not parent-son bonding trips. And then you heard Jordan screaming your name. You aimed the light. Just past the spikes, Jordan was tearing through the trees, looking behind him occasionally. Something huge—something you just couldn’t see—crashed into the trees on either side of the area Jordan ran through. Splinters flew off in all directions, bouncing off of whatever it was around you. The dust and leaves that rained over the creature gave away a silhouette twenty feet tall and curled over as it raced. Not unlike the round back of a wild boar, and seemingly just as deadly. As your son moved to where the spikes were, however, he locked his gaze on something else you couldn’t see, slowed down, and veered off the path. Unfortunately, the invisible creatures did not stop running.

Without thinking, you loaded an arrow and shot toward the sound right in front of you. It lodged into something, and whatever it was bellowed and shot off to the side.

“Jordan!” you yelled, loading another one. You ran forward a few paces and shot above his head. Your arrow lodged into another huge, invisible beast. This one didn’t stop its advance, and you felt it get closer and closer.

Jordan screamed, “Please help us!” into the night. A gale kicked up, and a yelp sounded from the creature behind you. There was another ripping sound, and the same distant yelp became strangled and choked.

"I am here only for the monsters, child!" the voice cried. "You and your parent will sink or swim on your own."

"You're a heartless monster!" Jordan shrieked. 

The other creature running toward you made contact, catapulting you backwards over it. Jordan screamed and cried as you slammed headfirst into a tree. You tried to pull back and stabilize yourself, but you heard the thundering footsteps twist around, more ripping, and suddenly you were thrust against the tree as something sliced through your back and lodged into the trunk.

Between the tunnel vision, the muffled screams beyond the dark treeline, and the painful pressure through your chest, there was the new moon. What a silly thing to focus on right then, but the dark gap where the moon usually hung in the sky was enrapturing. The moon didn’t truly disappear when it went dark; if you looked closely, you could see the barest rim of silvery light around the space rock, like the barely-there iris around a blown-out pupil surrounded by starry freckles.

She was beautiful, the moon. Scientifically speaking, you knew that a new moon wasn’t the dark side facing the earth, but there was such different energy on moonless nights than even on ones with the barest crescent squinting down from the sky.

You heard screaming, shrieking, and thuds, yelps, and a death rattle bellow. Yet one more thing cut into your back and pierced through your heart. Was that number three or four? Would this end soon? Had you known this part of the forest was haunted? Would that information really have stopped you?

The moon consumed your eyes and ears. You heard her sigh and felt her smile. No more screams of terror, no haunting voice, no half-heard, half-seen crashes of the elements rocketing around you and pinning you to a tree.

_‘Look around the world, my knight. Watch it closely.’_

You smiled at her in return and weakly reached one hand up to the nigh-invisible circle in the sky.


	16. King of the Knight

As you finish the tale, you notice that the candle flames have become so low that they can barely penetrate the darkness. You’re trembling after reliving the worst night of your life, tired as ever, leaning heavily on Pitch. He has his arms around you, keeping you mostly upright. He hums thoughtfully as he plays with your hair.

“The Zhuokou Incident…” he says. “That’s what the inquiry was about, correct?”

You sigh and nod. “That’s what they started calling it, yeah. I just knew it was in that area from all the internal reports. I didn’t live long enough to see it get a proper name like that.”

“How did your son survive?”

You drag yourself up so you’re sitting by yourself and you just stare off into nothingness. A weightless sensation passes through you, almost turning your stomach. Flashes of Jordan’s calm face and a long road pass through your mind. But nothing you can readily grasp. Pitch lays his hand on your back.

“I honestly don’t know,” you reply. “There’s a bit of haziness right after I reached for Selene. But my next full memory is being back in the clearing by myself. No campsite or tent, car gone from where I’d parked it. So I walked all the way to the city where I learned that people couldn’t see me or interact with me. And after that terror, I ran back to the woods for… maybe a month before trying again. With the same results.”

You close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to calm yourself down. It feels wonderful to keep them closed instead of straining against pure dark or low light. You’ve largely felt a chill throughout your stay here, but all of the candles cut through that a bit. Warmth and comfort, despite the unknown horrors just beyond the door. Safe behind the door. Your breaths even out, and you can feel yourself starting to lean.

“No, no, no.”

Hands grab you and jostle you a little bit. Your eyes snap open and you jerk upright. Pitch has you in a tight grip, gently lifting your eyelids apart. The candlelight is even lower, like it’s being eaten by the darkness as it tries in vain to oppose it. You pull away from Pitch and blink a few times, and then you shake your head.

“How do you stand being here all the time?” you ask. He laughs.

“First of all, I can see through it, so there are no mysteries in these shadows to frighten me.”

You carefully turn around and lean back against Pitch’s chest. “Right. You’re the only mystery in the dark.”

He chuckles and wraps one arm around your waist. You twist your neck to look up at him. He’s trying to catch your eye, a small smile creeping over his face. He crosses his other arm across your chest and curls his fingers around the side of your neck, massaging small circles with his thumb just under your jawbone. You tuck your head under his chin.

“Naturally. But secondly, I’m a shadow being. This is where I live because this is where I was born. Not much more to it.”

“I heard a rumor…” You take a moment to kiss his neck. He rumbles happily in response. “I heard a rumor you were from outer space.”

“Oh, did you?”

“There’s also apparently plenty of other aliens just hanging out on Earth.”

“Yes, yes there are.” He moves his hand down to rest it over your sternum. “I always thought the term ‘alien’ was grossly inelegant. Especially since it’s so intertwined with this image of… small, gray… fetuses.”

You nearly double over in laughter, his arms the only things preventing you from pulling away completely. The sound cuts through the oppressive anxiety in the air, and the candles flare up for a moment.

“F-fetuses? Koz, wh-why?” You're more energetic and awake now. The room feels almost cozy in the brighter light. “I mean, you’re not too far off from some of the tamer ‘theories’ out there.”

When your laughter subsides, Pitch draws you back in to his embrace and buries his face into your neck. He runs his tongue over it and bites lightly. 

“There you are.”

“I’ve just—I used to watch those stupid shows where so-called experts had thirty minutes to convince you that anything they didn’t fully understand was the result of alien activity. Not sure why.” You tilt your head back to look at him. “But look at that. All those hours paid off.” You snort. “You’re even gray!”

He sighs and places one hand over your throat, holding your jaw so that you have no choice but to look up at him. He can never get enough eye contact, you notice. He smirks and starts tugging the edge of your tunic, then changes his mind and starts loosening your belt.

“Like I said, though: the word ‘alien’ is just not befitting one such as I. There is nothing regal or complimentary about it.”

“And you care about that sort of thing a lot?”

He unclips your belt and sneaks his hand under your tunic, toying with your pants.

“Well, I am a king.” He grins wide and slips his fingertips just under the waistband as he runs his thumb over your lips. “I have to keep up appearances. There are certain expectations placed upon me.”

“Of course.”

As he runs his thumb around the edges of your lips again, you lick your tongue out and catch it. Pitch’s breath hitches, and as you take his finger into your mouth, his calculated grin morphs into surprise. He gapes like a fish. You quickly but carefully turn around until you’re sitting in his lap facing him. He’s still holding your face as you rotate, and you make sure to lock eyes with him. His gaze flickers up and down over you, finally resting on yours again. He shivers and grabs your hip.

You’ve been paying attention to how he moves, how he touches you. As you straddle his legs, wrapping one hand around his neck to play with his hair, you hollow your cheeks out and suck on his finger, hard. He grunts and furrows his brow, his hand on your waist clenching for a moment. You take his hand from your mouth and guide it to the back of your head. He tightens his fingers through it, eyes still wide, taking you in.

You lean in, trying to look as demure as possible as you place one hand on his chest and trail a your other down his jaw. You get mere centimeters from his face, still not breaking eye contact. Oh… he _can_ blush.

“Am I meeting expectations, your majesty?”

*************

He’s not quite sure what’s happening until he suddenly has a lap full of his spirit leaning so close to him he can see the different shades of speckles and lines running through their irises. They almost don’t look exhausted anymore; the only giveaway remaining is the circles around their eyes. But he’s not looking at those. He’s watching his lover transform and take on a role he’s quite sure now that they’ve played before. And he’s excited to see it unfold further.

“My king?” they say, looking expectant. “Is this satisfactory?”

He blinks and returns to his senses a bit. An answer, they’re waiting for him to answer. He gets a tighter grip on their hip and lightly tugs on their hair so that their head leans back just the least bit. A small moan escapes them. He smirks.

“It will be. Once you get to work and earn your keep.”

They close their eyes and let out a slow breath. A flush covers their cheeks.

“And what should I say to let you know if it gets to be too much?”

He draws a blank for a moment. “K—Kidra?”

They pause for a moment, and make a face. The spirit shakes their head a few times as they bite their lip. Pitch nods in agreement.

“Right. I suppose that… Right.” He searches desperately for a word before the mood completely shifts away. He glances around at the trophies lining his chamber walls, finally resting on one of his oldest. “Locket?”

The spirit nods. “Locket.”

“Locket.”

“Locket.”

Pitch tightens his grip on their hair a little bit more and adopts his persona again. His spirit closes their eyes and sighs, the hand against his chest twitching.

“Get to work,” he orders.

The spirit starts moving their hips against his, not that he needs much more stimulation to get hard. His cock is already bulging in his pants. Pitch groans loudly as they make contact and continue to slowly roll back and forth. A small patch of wetness starts to leak through his pants, and he closes his eyes to concentrate on the feeling alone. He remains there like that for several minutes until it becomes all at once too much but not enough, But he refuses to release this quickly, not when they're here like this. He opens his eyes and meets their gaze. The spirit is struggling between one expression of victory and one begging for him. Pitch tightens his grip in their hair just a little bit more and they cry out and grind furiously against him, panting desperately already.

“Oh, no, no,” he whispers, lifting them up by their waist a little. They slow down and pause, taking deep, deep breaths. He pushes their head to his until their foreheads touch. He leans up a little and says against their lips, “Slowly. You will make this last.”

They pant and nod. He pulls their head a little to the side, and they whimper.

"Is that understood?"

They nod vigorously and try to meet their hips to his again, but he's in for a penny, in for a pound. Pitch holds them up still, despite how his dick twitches in want of the stimulation back. He waits until they truly focus on his eyes—oh how long he has gone without deep, purposeful eye contact, without acknowledgement—and then he draws them very close to him.

"I asked you a question," he says, dragging his teeth across their neck and up to their ear, where he lets his breath brush over it. The spirit tries to squirm in his hold, but he stays firm. "When I ask you a question, I expect you to answer me. So again: you will take this slow, so that we can make this last. Do you understand?"

His spirit sighs and shivers. "Yes, yes, Pitch!"

He purrs but says, "I do like that answer. But your phrasing is a little off. Try again."

The spirit makes a very pleased sound and curls their fingers into the edge of his robe. "Yes, your majesty. I understand."

"That is _much_ better."

He lowers them again, closing his eyes at the relieving contact. They start again, and he pushes them against his lips, swallowing every wonderful moan and whimper they make. He moves his hand from their hip up to their breast and gropes them over the cloth. He squeezes and pinches, drawing more desperate whines out of them. They start to speed up, but at the first threat of moving them away again, they slow. One of their hands grips his shoulder for balance, and their other holds on to his robe, tugging on it to the point he imagines they might rip it off under a different play circumstance. He's not entirely opposed to that idea, honestly, but that's a fantasy to fulfill later. Now, he's the one in control, and he's pretty good at that.

The spirit tries to move away from his lips but he keeps them there, only releasing them briefly so they can grab a gasp of air. He bites their lower lip as they briefly pull away and then recaptures them to shove his tongue into their mouth. They jerk their hips, moan, and start sucking on it. He responds, humming against them and slowly trailing his hand under their tunic, feeling the spirit twitch at the contact.

They run their hands behind his head and curl their own fingers into his hair. Pitch revels in the feeling, amazed once again that they have chosen to be with him, heart and body. Millennia of loneliness washing away—thrusting away against his ever-hardening cock. It’s getting almost painful, and the spirit sucking on his tongue makes it twitch as he imagines the beautiful pressure surrounding it. He drags them away from his face just enough to look at them. They open their eyes, and he sees them glazed over in lust.

“Kneel,” he growls, barely managing to keep his voice from wavering at the sight.

“Yes, your majesty.”

He lets go of their hair to allow them to slide down and perch on their knees on the floor in front of him. Pitch runs his fingers through their hair, and removes their cloak to lay under them again. He’ll have to remember to have the fearlings gather some pillows so that this poor, beautiful spirit can be comfortable as they learn their place in his court. And also because it’s rude to keep using their clothes, regardless of current role.

He spreads his legs and leans back, looking down at them. The spirit situates themself between and runs their hands up his thighs. They look up at him, and his heart hammers against his chest at the sight of them flushed and panting, their eyes sparkling from the candlelight. He almost loses it then and there, but he reminds himself: _Slowly… slowly…_ This mantra is becoming increasingly harder to follow. It always does, but he takes a few deep breaths because it will be worth it. He runs his hand over their face again. They lean into the touch, blinking slowly, their mouth opening with a small gasp. He firmly grabs their chin and pulls them closer to his aching groin.

“I assume you know your next task?”

"Y-yes. Yes, my lord."

"Good."

They lean in and nuzzle against his bulge, mouthing him over the shadowy fabric. Oh, the heat! They're so warm compared to him, and he feels like he might catch fire under their ministrations. He desperately tries to control his breathing, to maintain that regal air this is all precedented on. He hovers his hand over the back of their head, so close to shoving them where he needs them.

_Slowly—_

They run their tongue across the fabric, the damp barely leaking through. His cock twitches against their tongue, and their breath hitches. The spirit kisses up the shaft and reaches for the waistband of his pants. He almost bats their hand away, just so he can savor this, but he wants real contact more. They pull him out, and Pitch jerks at the coolness suddenly rushing over him. He tries to suppress a moan. When he fails, he catches his spirit looking up at him, a grin across their face.

They start by pressing long, wet kisses along his shaft, and the heat is so intense that he releases a shuddering moan. They move up and down, taking ages in each direction. He once again stops himself from pushing their head down to swallow him whole, settling for massaging the back of their neck. The spirit is following his orders to such a T that he's regretting it. And he wouldn't have it any other way. They finally reach the tip again and kiss it, suddenly flicking their tongue against it. His whole body twitches.

They move back down to the base and nuzzle him, pressing kisses up and around his thighs and lower stomach. And then they suddenly dive down and lick across his balls. It’s unexpected enough that Pitch spasms at the contact, trying to remind himself to have patience, but it’s becoming so hard… They lap a few times, slowly sucking one into their mouth and swirling their tongue over it. He tenses.

“Please…” he whispers as quietly as he can.

His spirit brings their head back up and bores their gaze into him, a small smile on their lips that they hide behind more kisses and nuzzles across his thighs and cock.

“What was that, my king?” they say.

They pause in their attentions, lay their head in his lap, and just look at him, squeezing his thighs. Pitch heaves a few deep breaths and runs his fingers through their hair. They inhale sharply at the touch. He tightens the grip and they moan.

“Your mouth,” Pitch growls. "Use it properly."

He presses their cheek against his cock, and they smile as they finally take him into their mouth. Pitch loses the mask of his kingly persona fully, moaning and whispering their name. He lets them set the pace, though he doesn’t remove the hand from their head. An inch. Another. They start slow, but increase their pace rapidly, bobbing their head. They take most of him in and pause, running the tip of their tongue firmly up until they get to a point just below the head, and they just press small, wet circles there for a moment. Pitch keens and digs his fingernails into their shoulder. He presses on their head for a second before remembering himself and settling for carding his fingers through their hair again.

“Yes. Oh, yes!” Pitch’s breathing intensifies. The spirit wraps their arms around his knees and moves faster and faster, pulling themself up and down. 

“Wonderful, beautiful.” 

The spirit moans against him and reaches down to themself. Pitch fights against the instinct to close his eyes and take in the feeling as it is, and he's rewarded with the glorious sight of his spirit completely lost in their work and running their hand up and down their body until they shove it under their waistband and start touching themself. They start to tremble and moan, the sound muffled against his hard, twitching dick in their mouth. Part of him wants to stop them, order them to deny themself and wallow in the frustration like he has. But the sight is so much that he can barely focus on his own pleasure and the fact that this spirit is here, is with him, did not throw him away completely when his deception was revealed.

Because he has to be honest with himself: he does not deserve this.

The spirit pauses, his cock halfway down their throat. They release him, catch their breath, and look up at him with worry on their face. His spirit reaches up and covers the hand in their hair with their own, and they run their other hand up to their shoulder to grasp his. Pitch suddenly realizes that he said his worry out loud.

“Perhaps you’ve made some mistakes in your day—”

“A lot of mistakes...”

“—but maybe those mistakes don’t necessarily mean that you’re unworthy.”

They bring his other hand to their face and lay another kiss to his palm. Pitch is happy at the contact, but unsure if he believes them. It’s nice to hear, though. The spirit looks up at him, smiling gently. They bring his hand up again and kiss the tips of every finger.

“My lord...” they say.

“Yes?”

They wrap their tongue around his middle finger and take it all the way into their mouth. They wink and hollow out their cheeks as they suck. Pitch cries out, his member reawakening from where it has been cooling and twitching. The spirit leans in close and releases his finger.

“Will you let me finish blowing you now, my lord?”

He chuckles and directs their mouth back on to his cock. He lightly presses on the back of their head, taking charge of the rhythm. With every bob of their head, they go a little deeper, a little further, making small noises here and there. It won't take much longer. Pitch sees stars behind his closed eyes, which he then opens to looks at their face. Flushed, desperate. Their brilliant eyes trained up to him. He spasms, jerking his hips up into their mouth.

They cough a bit, push back against his grip, and tap his knee. He relents, but they replace their mouth with their hand and pump him even faster than they could swallow. They lean down and take one of his balls into their mouth, gently sucking and kissing as they squeeze him. He holds them as tightly to him as he dares, the pressure building and building. All notion of going slow is out the window; he chases his finish like a dog chasing a wild animal. They squeeze and pump and swipe over the head, and he's so hard that he feels he might literally explode. He doubles over them, trying to hold on, but with a shout he comes in their grasp.

*************

His face is magnificent. Scrunched up, eyes closed, panting as he curls over you. You gently pump Pitch a few more times and lave your tongue over him to work him through his orgasm, just enjoying what you’ve done. His arms are trembling around you in an embrace, and he's sobbing your name. You give a small kiss and bite to his thigh, and try to discreetly wipe your hand off on your cloak.

He grabs your wrist and uses his own robes to wipe your hand off. He then lifts you from the floor and places you back into his lap.

“That was marvelous,” he whispers to you. He traces his lips up your neck and presses a kiss to your jaw. You meet him and linger on a slow, deep kiss. When you part, you lean your chin over his shoulder and sigh, content.

“You deserve this,” you whisper back. He combs his fingers through your hair and heaves a deep sigh.

“I truly don’t.”

“Kozmotis?”

He hums at the name, but answers, “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you kidnap me when you had the chance all those times?”

“I answered this question weeks ago.” He sits back, looks into your eyes, and runs a hand down your face. “I have plans, and you’re way too distracting. As just demonstrated.”

“You could have had me and your plans. What would I have been able to do about it?”

“To be fair, the first time I considered it, you stabbed me before I could make up my mind.” He gestures to the patchy scar across his shoulder. You lean down to kiss it.

“And then? What stopped you?”

“The Guardians were protecting you. They’d have noticed your absence and come looking for me.”

“And then?”

There’s a long silence. You continue to kiss over his scar, and then move up until you've got his ear. His hand reaches up to your cheek, fingers twitching a bit still, and he guides you back so that he's searching your features for a reply.

“I don’t have a good answer for that,” he finally says, looking distant. “I just… didn’t want to see you go away. Nor did I want a mere plaything.”

You tilt his face to yours. “That’s why I think you deserve this.”

He smiles, and closes his eyes, furrowing his brow. “Funny. Most people would consider not kidnapping and torturing someone for the sake of world domination to be less than the bare minimum of courtesy.”

You nuzzle into his face. “Between what we’ve both done, maybe we can add up to the bare minimum.”

He tightly embraces you and kisses you softly. He looks at you, the edges of his eyes shimmering, a kind smile on his face. His smile disappears for a moment, and he tries to say something.

“I..." he starts. You nod, encouraging him to continue. He stammers again, blinking, then shakes his head. He shifts his demeanor, reaches around, and shoves his hand down the back of your pants, grabbing a handful of your ass and squeezing. You gasp and he delivers one swift, bruising bite to your neck before whispering in your ear.

"I think it's your turn," he says. And it is all too soon before the fearlings come to drag him away from you.


	17. Isolation

“You’re not kidding. This is a piece of a spaceship?”

The spirit brings the candle closer to see the item and then looks back at Pitch. He nods.

“You already knew I was an—”

“Alien,” they whisper quickly, smiling and glancing at him.

He sighs and tries to look frustrated, but their cheek is adorable. “—Extraterrestrial being, I was going to say. That was my ship. Apparently the only piece of the only ship in my fleet that survived to crash on this planet.”

They hover their fingers above it like they’re in a museum. He reaches over and picks up the chunk of ship and allows them to examine it closer.

“It just… I kind of expected thick metal, rivets, ways of mediating the vacuum of space.” They tilt their head. “Not this wood-like material.”

“The aesthetics of you humans is unfortunately bound to the rigidity of science, rather than the whimsy of magic.” Pitch wraps his arms around their waist and sets the piece back down. “Not that humans are incapable of design over function sometimes, though it usually rests in their fictions. Mr. Giger, for example, took my influence and ran away with it to create wonderful art.”

His spirit leans backwards to look up at him. Their eyes dance from the candlelight. “And H.P. Lovecraft?”

Pitch laughs. “One of the few humans from whom I could feed without first influencing directly. His nightmares and creations, his personal and imagined demons—all him.” He looks thoughtful for a moment. “Well… technically anyone who succumbs to fear is the one in charge of the decision. Even my most concentrated efforts can only influence so much.”

They head over the next bit of paraphernalia stacked on the walls. It’s a collection built over centuries, full of trophies and reminders of his work. A broken Templar sword from the Crusades. A broken mechanical gadget from the Pookas. Broken stained glass from a burned church in the Middle Ages. If anything the little tour he’s giving is to keep the spirit awake and content, rather than giving in to the darkness. The tour continues, and they pause in front of the locket.

“So…” they begin slyly. “What’s the significance of this one?”

“Probably a trinket I found while out in the cosmos.” He picks it up and turns it over in his hands. “I’m actually not sure where I got this one. It’s been so long—”

He flips it open and pauses. There’s a picture there: a young girl’s face. A wave of deja vu wracks through him as the visions of the young girl and that woman flit into his consciousness. The girl in the locket seems to match the one who’s been haunting him. He closes his eyes to try and capture her image properly, but just as with the woman, obscuring shadows prevent him from seeing her all at once. He shakes his head and opens his eyes. The spirit looks at him, worried.

“I think… I think it’s just been too long for me to remember this one.” He shrugs and places the locket back on its shelf. “I suppose it might have been important or memorable once.”

“So much history here,” they murmur.

“All of it wicked,” he replies.

They both stand in silence for a moment before his spirit turns in his arms. They start to say something, but a burst of cold fear makes them shudder. Pitch turns to see a fearling apparate into his chambers, a signal that he is wanted at another meeting. He rolls his eyes and sighs, flicking his wrist to dismiss it. The fearling reforms right next to him, causing the spirit to flinch away. This time, Pitch is angry.

He lets go of the spirit and looms over the fearling, elongating into more of a shadow himself. He swipes at the fearling and reduces it to mere wisps of shadow.

“I am coming,” he growls.

He turns back to his spirit only for them to spring back another step, staring at his form. Pitch quickly reverts.

“My apologies.” He taking their hand.

They kiss his fingers. “It's all right. I just got surprised.”

That’s true, to a certain extent. He felt their terror, though, saw their hand twitching towards their arrows. His stomach roils at the thought of them afraid of him, not that he hasn’t given them reason to be over the last year. But he reminds himself that they’re with him by choice, and they trust him.

_I must see about getting them back to the open air,_ Pitch resolves. _Or at least find Kidra._

He gives the spirit’s hand one last squeeze and exits the room, wandering down the winding, maze-like corridors until he once again comes to the war room. The walls have been papered over with maps and inventory lists and goals for the next few weeks, the largest of which is, of course, the two-pronged attack on the Guardian bases. 

But as Pitch enters, he notices that the room is strangely devoid of fearlings. All three Nightmare Men, however, are present, and they slowly turn to him as he enters. Pitch walks over to the table, watching them. 

“Such light attendance. If I had realized it would be so small, I would have requested the meeting be put off.” 

“Amplify…” the Nightmare Men say. Pitch narrows his eyes. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Use… Spirit…" 

Pitch morphs into an elongated shadow again and bears down on his brigadiers. “I dare you to repeat that one more time.” 

“Take… Power… Use…” 

_C-O-N-Q-U-E-R_

His shadow form shakes at the death rattle voices swirling around him. The sounds sift around the room, prying their way under his nails and eyelids until he shrinks back to himself. He leans over the table, catching his breath. He closes his eyes and concentrates, willing up energy and control. 

“Enough!” he yells, clenching his fist. The voices stop, but the Nightmare Men hover higher in the room, watching him. 

“Whine and prod all you like, but I am a selfish creature and I do not feel like sharing this.” 

“Pragmatic…" 

“We have already dealt a significant blow to the Guardians. Careful curation of our tactics will ensure an overall victory.” 

“Quicker…” 

“We have eternity to achieve power. It will happen sooner or later.” 

The entities settle down to the floor. One of them shifts over to Pitch, reaching out a hand to his chest. It touches one of its too-long fingers just over where his heart is. Pitch swats its hand away. 

“Did you require anything else from me? Or was this whole thing a means of wasting what little time I have with my spirit?” 

“Guardians…” they say, summoning shadows and black sand around the map where Burgess would be. 

Pitch spends the next six hours painstakingly going over ways to ensure the defenses around Frost’s base remain in place. After the initial outburst, he easily settles back into his general’s demeanor. There have already been a few efforts to retake the town, mostly headed by Frost’s believers running a half-botched whisper campaign to get other children back on board with believing in him, aided in part by Mother Goose and her rhymes. They’ve put up quite the resistance, but ultimately the corruption has refused to give way. It can’t hold by itself forever, which is why the attack coming up will help keep the balance tilting in their favor. 

Pitch tries to extricate himself from the meeting several times. It’s nothing he hasn’t already gone over with his troops, but they keep him there long after he feels like he’s done all he can for the time being. Finally, he can take it no more. 

“I’m going,” he says. “But I do have a request: look for the spirit’s companion, Kidra. They were last seen in the forest where you retrieved us.” 

The request is initially met with silence. The Nightmare Men slowly roll their heads to each other, and then back to Pitch. They nod. 

“Very good.” He turns to go, and then says, “Oh! And do not disturb me unless something actually important happens. You are supposed to be my right hands; if I cannot trust you to handle delegations of the mass armies, then what is the point of keeping you around?” 

Pitch leaves the room and wanders back down the corridors, moving faster and faster the closer he gets to his chambers. He leaves the role of general behind him, eager to switch to his role as lover. Bursting through the door, he looks for the spirit, only narrowly ducking out of the way as an arrow comes for him. It explodes in a flash of golden light so painful that Pitch staggers a few steps, blinded. 

“Oh! Oh no!” 

Hands grab his wrists and lead him over to the bench. They close around his face and tilt it upward, carefully running their fingers at the skin around his eyes. 

“Sorry… I thought you were another mob of fearlings.” 

Pitch blinks a few times, his sight gradually fading from bright white to comfortable darkness. The spirit’s face comes into view. Once he blinks and finally focuses on them, they sigh and kiss his forehead. 

“Sorry again.” 

Pitch catches their hand. “What happened?” 

They glance over to the other side of the room, where he can now see a huge pile of pillows. He nods for a moment, glad that his servants followed through on the important request. But one more look at the spirit’s face makes him realize it must have been a little more involved than a simple delivery. 

“What did they do?” 

“They popped in, dumped the pillows, and then just watched me for a little bit. Some of them seemed to lay down and mime sleeping. Then they all laughed.” They shiver. “I hate their laughter.” 

Pitch grits his teeth. This is what they were doing while he was tied up in the tedium of battle minutiae? Harassing them? He stands immediately, holding their shoulders. The spirit grasps his forearms. 

“Koz?” 

He smiles at them, kisses them, and then rushes back out into his lair as they call behind him. He melds into the shadows, racing to where the fearlings stay when they’re not out causing terror in the world. He enters the area and spreads himself out through the shadows, rising up the walls until he consumes the space. The fearlings look round and round, confused as he surrounds them. Pitch’s voice booms throughout the space. 

“Should you ever need or be requested to enter my chambers again…” he says. The fearlings scramble. “You will do so only on request, entering after knocking. Should you fail to follow this simplistic request…” 

Pitch swirls his form down, grabbing a random fearling. It struggles in his grasp. He wraps a shadowy hand around its throat and squeezes. Fearlings are merely functionally immortal; they can die as easily as they can be replaced. He crushes the fearling’s throat until it stops moving in his grasp, and the body fades into the shadows. As it disappears, there’s something familiar about the motions he’s gone through, but he doesn’t dwell on the feeling. The remaining fearlings stop where they stand, nodding and chattering their acquiescence. 

“I’m glad we have come to this understanding,” Pitch says, swirling back through the shadows and racing back. He passes a Nightmare Man along the way, and in the split-second he passes it, its face contorts, almost looking angry. He ignores it. He’s delivered his orders. 

Pitch slowly enters his chambers this time, announcing his presence before fully entering. Before his spirit can ask, he scoops them up and takes them over to the mound of pillows, intent on making sure they are okay. 

“Koz—Pitch,” they say, a little halfheartedly. They return his kisses and touches. As usual, the physical contact and affection seems to keep them grounded and awake. “What happened? Did you talk to them or…?” 

A flash of an angry expression crosses his face, and he looks past the spirit, letting out a growl of a huff. Before they can comment or ask, he replaces it with a practiced smile. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he replies, drawing them close so that their back is against his chest. 

They relax against him, and he sits there, clutching them. The spirit reaches up behind themself and finds his hair. They guide his head over their shoulder, gently stroking the nape of his neck as they stare across the room, watching the shadows dance between the candle flames. They’re quiet, but they’re not cold or distant, merely enjoying the silence. 

Or so he believes for a moment. As he’s sighing against their neck and lazily pressing kisses to it, the hand in his hair strokes slower and slower until it drops against his shoulder. He nips the spirit, but they don’t respond. The only noise they make is soft, regular inhales and exhales. As he shifts to turn them around, they relax further into his hold—no, they’re slumping against him. The spirit’s head lolls back, and Pitch sees their calm, sleeping face. 

His stomach turns over. Much as he’s pleased to see just how peaceful they look in sleep again, he can feel the shadows closing in. He hears a wave of excitement echoing up from his lair as the fearlings sense a sleeping mind. The sound is the only thing that approaches, however; his demonstration earlier must have made an impression. 

The spirit tenses and shifts in their sleep. Pitch sighs. He hates to disturb them, as they could use the rest, but it will be easier to wake them before they reach a deeper cycle of sleep. He lifts them up to himself and whispers in their ear. 

“Darling, you must wake up now.” 

He lightly jostles them, and their eyes flicker open for a moment. They twitch for a moment, but fail to focus on him. Their eyelids fall again, and their breathing stays even and deep. 

“You have to stay awake,” he says, louder and more firmly. 

He moves them in such a way to put their balance off-kilter just enough that they snap awake with a sharp inhale. They turn in his grasp, blinking wildly, until they see him. They yawn, moving to cover their mouth. He purses his lips and pulls down their lower eyelids. They immediately pull away, rubbing their eyes. 

“I’m awake, Koz. I’m awake.” They finish rubbing their eyes and then look at him. Their eyes are only barely puffy. Pitch senses the fearlings’ excitement die down until it’s barely a begging rumble. The spirit wraps their arms around his shoulders and says, “They weren’t coming for me, were they?” 

They say it in a matter-of-fact tone, but he can feel their nervousness as they anticipate the answer. Pitch tips their chin up and smiles. 

“We needn’t worry about those fearlings anymore. I firmly instructed my servants to knock next time.” 

*************

You find that time moves differently in Pitch’s realm. Or rather, as he explains, “Time moves the same, but it can feel longer or shorter if you aren’t familiar with the shadows.”

It feels like you’ve been here for at most a week. Pitch tells you it’s been a month. He comes and goes, usually at the insistence of a fearling. But as time becomes less and less tangible, so does your grip on yourself. So does your resistance against the calming idea of sleep.

The next time the fearlings enter the chambers, they do indeed knock. And immediately after the knock sounds, a small bunch of them teleport inside to drop more candles. They lumber closer to you than last time, smiling and laughing quietly. You back up until you hit the wall. They advance a little more, and you summon a few more arrows to your hand. One twitches a little too close for comfort, and you stab it with an arrow.

It screams so loud that you think the air itself is going to shatter. Parts of it slough off and dissipate into shadows as the rest of it is consumed by gold. About a third of the candles instantly snuff out. You skirt around the edges of the room until you’re back in the light.

The remaining fearlings jerk around to face you and start advancing. You raise your arrows, but they suddenly skid to a stop. A terrifyingly dense shadow swoops over your shoulder, taking out a few more candles with its cold presence. It flies over to the fearlings, looping around them until they’re rounded up. The shadow condenses and vanishes, leaving no trace of any of the creatures. You stand there for a few moments, catching your breath and trying to slow down your racing thoughts.

Another horrible scream echoes from far off. The sound reminds you of the shouts from your son that night, and your back starts to ache again. Your breath comes out shaky, and you’re frozen in place. You’re not sure how long it lasts, but it almost as abruptly, it cuts off.

The tension in your body relaxes a little bit, but a wave of exhaustion crashes into you next. You sit down on the bench and try to regain your bearings. Your eyes slip shut, and you start to lean forward. As soon as you feel the falling sensation of leaning too far, you jerk back upright and open your eyes. They’re dry, and they itch. You blink rapidly, but as you continue to sit in the deepening dark, you can feel yourself slipping off again.

You haul yourself up, grab one of the candles that the fearlings dropped on the floor, and use it to relight all of the ones that had gone out. It takes a bit of effort to make the fire catch from one wick to the next because they’re so low, but after what feels like thirty minutes, the room is bright again. The more candles you light, the more the shadows recede, the higher the flames reach, and the more awake you feel.

As you finish lighting them all, you hear a noise near the entrance. You spin around to see Pitch enter and slam the door, a shadow rising up the wall behind him, flickering from the candlelight. You set down the candle you’ve been using the light everything and walk over towards him. He turns to you, so much rage in his eyes that you halt halfway there.

As soon as he sees you, the angers melts from his face, and he sighs deeply, wiping his hands over his face. He holds out a hand to you. You ease over and take it. He meets you halfway and kisses your hand.

“Are you all right?” he asks. The shadow behind him looms toward the ceiling.

“I’m fine.” You give a small, single chuckle.”I guess they did knock…”

“They knew exactly what they were doing. And they’ve paid for their insolence.”

You glance at the shadow again. “Is that what that scream was?”

He starts wrapping his arm around you, but pauses and deflates when you say that. “I’m so sorry you heard that. I was trying to keep it as quiet as possible.”

“Why did they—?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to play a sick joke on me while simultaneously following my orders.” He sets his jaw rigid and glares to the side. The shadow looms larger. “They’ve been restless lately.”

“Koz…” you whisper, leaning your forehead against his chest. He wraps his arms around you.

“Yes, love?”

“I’m losing it here. I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

You wrap your arms around his waist, under his robe. The feeling of his skin on your hands and arms is a relief. You can see him almost plainly in this light, but holding him and knowing for sure he’s there is possibly the only thing keeping you from teetering into insanity at this point. You lay a kiss on his chest.

“Something has to give, and I think it’s going to be me,” you say.

“No. I won’t let that happen.”

“I’ve seen every inch and corner of this room, and only this room. I can’t keep track of the days. I’m drowning in a sea of misery and terror every second. I—”

Pitch sweeps you off your feet, carrying you over to the pillows. He sits himself down, you in his lap, and he immediately begins to run his hands over you. You waken slightly more at the attention, eventually sitting up and straddling his lap to return it all in kind. You glance up behind him, and the shadow has moved to the wall now behind him. It flickers furiously between the flames. You pull back for a second to just stare.

Pitch follows your gaze. Upon seeing the shadow, he makes a pained expression and waves a hand. The shadow recedes, too slowly to be natural, but you suppose it comes with the territory for shadow creatures. He returns his attention to you, holding you close and whispering in your ear.

“Please keep holding on. I’m working on a solution for all this. You’ll see Selene again, I promise. Just please, please hold on.”

He’s tender this time. Not necessarily gentle, as the new bite marks along your neck and chest indicate, but he takes his time with each and every touch, kiss, and lick. You melt into his hold and return as much as you can. You two end up bare from the waist-up, pressing yourselves against each other and feeling relieved at the touch.

The fearlings eventually call him yet again, summoning him to yet another meeting. He sighs, but doesn’t get up from holding himself over you, pressing a few more kisses to you. They chatter for him again. He shakes his head and becomes more insistent with you. You run your fingers through his hair.

“Koz?”

“Not yet.”

You’re not complaining, and your cross your arms around his neck to keep him close to you. He grasps you desperately as another warped wave of cold and emptiness passes through the room. Something catches his eye, and Pitch raises his eyes to something above and behind you. You start to lean your head up to see what he does, but he places a hand over your eyes.

“Don’t,” he whispers to whatever he’s looking at. “I’m coming.”

A gestalt rises, disparate whispers bouncing from corner to corner. You freeze and take a sharp breath. It hits you differently when you can’t see. It hits harder. But Pitch keeps his hand firmly held over your eyes. Above you, his voice shakes.

”Leave my chambers in peace, and I will follow close behind.”

The moan sweeps the room one more time, worming its way under your skin and thrashing for a moment. But it fades. Pitch uncovers your eyes as he sits up. He rubs his face, sighing.

“They’re going to run me so ragged, I won’t be able to lead them to victory properly,” he mutters. You place a hand on his shoulder, and he spins toward you. He places a hand to your cheek. “I think we need to get away for a bit, hm? A small vacation after this meeting.”

“Will they let us?”

“They aren’t in charge. They have no choice in the matter.”

He hauls himself up and says that he’ll be back soon, once again leaving you in a small box that seems to get even smaller when you’re by yourself. Gathering a few candles, you arrange them in a circle around where you sit to wait. And wait. And wait. Hopefully, time will seem to move faster this time, rather than slower. A vacation away from absolute darkness sounds wonderful. To see the stars again… to see Selene or even the bright full moon again…

Your life before now feels like a far-off dream. A half-remembered fantasy you made up to comfort yourself. You’re not completely submerged in the dark, but it creeps closer every second, the shadows closing in, edging in through the gap under the door.

 _But why should you trust him?_ A stray thought catches your attention. You shake your head to try and shake it loose. _He is the Boogeyman. He wants to take over the world. He could just take and take and take, and so long as you believe he is trustworthy, he can just. Keep. Taking._

The thoughts come fast, loud as someone yelling directly in your ear. You start to tremble, but this is hardly the first time you’ve had thought like this run rampant. They taunted you about your partner in life, about how you were never worthy of their time and affection. It was true, but they had still stayed with you, and so the anxiety could never have full control.

_But if you realize you were never worthy, then how can you justify keeping them? You poisoned them, and then turned around to sell said poison to the military. All those innocents in Taiwan… Almost kicked off a war._

_But of course this is why you have no sense of self-preservation._

The candles become so low they’re only barely-there blue flames on the tips of each wick. The darkness is as viscous as tar. It closes in more aggressively than usual when Pitch leaves for a meeting. It feels more alive than ever. Your breathing quickens, and you keep waiting.

One of the candles goes out, the flame unable to sustain itself against the atmosphere. Hands shaking, you pick up the candle, rip away some of the excess wax, and put the wick to another lit one. It also goes out. You put the candle back and stand, trying to keep yourself sane by looking at all of the trophies yet again. When did isolation get so lonely? You spent seventy-five years alone and invisible, not caring about anything other than your experiments and traipsing around the woods. Then again, you had your experiments all that time, and you could traipse around the woods to your heart’s content. Staying in one space is easier when you have the option of leaving.

The darkness curls around your ankles, and you situate yourself so that you’re sitting on the bench, feet as far above the floor as possible. You’ve traced this path before: pillows, trophies, bench. Pillows, trophies, bench. Pillows, trophies, bench. Minutes, seconds, hours, days from now—however long the time actually is—you’ll move back to the pillows. Then look over the trinkets again. Then sit on the bench, desperately trying to keep sane.

_A pacing tiger in a cage. At least the tiger has the instincts to retaliate against cruelty. But maybe you’re right: you deserve this._

Two more candles go out. You don’t notice until the smell of smoke reaches you, already so faint from dissipating through the room. Four more candles. You wrap your arms around yourself. Something is wrong this time. Has it felt like twenty minutes, or two hours? What could that possibly translate to in actual time?

“Kozmotis. Please hurry,” you whisper. Your faint voice sound wrong blasting through the silence, and it’s eaten almost right away.

Six more candles. You can barely see your own hand in front of your face anymore. The remaining candles are pinpoints of light so far away, yet too close. A piece of the darkness slithers across your shoulder, and you shiver. A sound echoes up from the corridors beyond the door. Something is running around. Something is bellowing.

Half of the remaining candles snuff out. You jump up from where you’re sitting, grabbing your bow and placing one arrow into it. You move towards the area with the most light, but it may as well be completely black for all the good the candles are doing. Something in the dark briefly covers your eyes, and you stumble into one of the candle holders, knocking it over. Whatever is in the corridors yelps and grumbles, coming closer to Pitch’s chambers with a familiar _thunk thunk thunk_ of a canter. You gasp and whistle. The sounds return, closer, and turn into a small bleating sound.

“Kidra!”

You run over to the door and press your ear up to it. The sounds continue with snuffling and scratching close to the doorway.

_Trick. It could be a trick. You’re in the lair of shadows and darkness. You can’t see properly. The fearlings have already tried to taunt you._

You back up from the door a few steps. You shake your head a few times and blink. It’s gotten so dark that you have to make sure you’re still awake. A yelp cries out. You place one hand on the door. Another yelp, and then the haunting chittering of fearlings. They pass by your door, and there’s a thud not too far off, followed by a strangled bleat. You lean against the door, covering your mouth with your hand. A few more candles blink out, and a wave of anxiety swirls around you, drawing tears from your eyes.

_But what if it’s not?_

You keep an arrow nocked on your bowstring as you open the door. Nothingness echoes through the blinding darkness. There is no floor or ceiling or walls that you can see. An alarm bell struggles to reach you in the back of your mind.

There is a yelp somewhere in the distance.

You cross the threshold and make your way towards it.


	18. The Uncanniness Of Separation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 500 hits yall. glad that youre all on this weird-ass journey with me. this isnt my first time writing fic, but its my first truly serious attempt in over a decade. *raises glass* thanks

As soon as Pitch bursts his way into the meeting, he’s greeted with two of the three Nightmare Men. He checks behind him. Nothing. The door to the room shuts as he glances out into the halls, making him look back at the two.

“If one of you is excused from this, I’m certain we can either put this off or—”

“Burgess…” Pitch rolls his eyes. Not this again. “Lost…”

Pitch snaps his focus to them. He’s not quite sure he’s hearing them correctly. The Nightmare Men point to the small town on the map, and then up to the same point on the large iron globe at the other end of the room. The town that has stood dark for the last few months bubbles with lights. So much brightness concentrating in one area that it’s creating a spotlight down to the floor. Pitch moves closer.

“How…?”

“Christmas…” comes the hissing answer.

The Nightmare Men swoop over to Pitch and flank him. Pitch does a few calculations in his mind. It’s well past the new year mark already. North’s holiday has come and gone, but only now is the community brightening up. He knew they’d lose some ground after it, but that is why he’s been reinforcing his hold while planning the next stage.

“This isn’t right,” he says. “Just the other day it was nearly as hopeless and dreary as ever.”

“Guardians… Work… Quickly…”

“Yes, I suppose my last great defeat was undone rather quickly. But there was so much concentrated fear in the area; spring will not truly come to the town for years.”

“Nonetheless…” One of the Nightmare Men gestures to the globe, stretching one long finger even longer to touch near the bright spot. It flinches momentarily as part of its form crosses into the light. “Perhaps… Not… Completely…”

Pitch looks at it thoughtfully. A spike in belief could spell trouble, but it could just be an over—correction of the children that will burn itself out as the shadows and fear sweep back in. It is still winter there; this could just be a wave of hope at the promise of a spring that shall not blossom.

“… Yet…”

The Nightmare Man completes its rather complex, ominous thought, and looks back to Pitch. Pitch still is confused and tracing the forecasted results in his head. Even allowing for more resistance, there just should not be such a turnaround. Half of his efforts, half of the reason he even entertained so many repetitive meetings that tore him away from the spirit was specifically to make sure he and his armies were continuously fed from the dire fear born of a Guardian’s corrupted home. It can’t all be for nothing.

“Something is wrong here,” he whispers, shaking his head. “We’re missing something.”

A swirling portal of darkness opens nearby, controlled by a Nightmare Man. It looks at Pitch and slowly inclines its head.

“General…”

“An inspection?”

The Nightmare Man nods again, gesturing a hand toward the portal. A muffled sound echoes up from the rest of the lair. Pitch starts to turn to the sound, thinking it familiar, but the beings accompanying him swoop down, one still gesturing to the portal, the other behind him.

“Mere… Fearlings…” they say.

He listens a little closer, and all he can indeed hear are the usual skittering sounds of rambunctious fearlings. He hopes the spirit cannot hear them. Pitch refocuses and steps toward the portal.

“Let’s make this quick.”

He steps through the shadows, and after a moment he emerges into the dark, quiet, stale streets of Burgess.

*************

You drag the tip of an arrow along the invisible walls of Pitch’s lair. The sound of metal scraping along stone-like material keeps you grounded enough that you can concentrate on heading toward the echoes somewhere ahead of you. It also allows you to feel less lost. Occasionally, the arrow dips into a doorway, and you have to pause and listen to make sure you’re still on the correct trail.

Even as you continuously move forward, you find yourself moving in winding, twisting motions. The walls suddenly bulge and recede like the naturally hewn stone of a cave. Likewise, they narrow and widen. Becoming so tight you have to turn to your side and shuffle slowly. Becoming so wide that you place your back against the wall you know and fire blindly in the opposite direction to test the length of the room. Each time you fire an arrow, there’s a short burst of blinding light, and you get only a moment’s worth of visual confirmation. Strangely, every large room—no matter the irregularities of the walls you can feel with your own hands—looks square and rigid in the brief light. And every room like this you come across looks identical.

You feel as if you’ve been chasing the sounds in front of you for hours, which might be translating to days in real time. You try not to dwell on the time disparity. It’ll only slow you down, and your exhaustion and anxiety have already kept you from barreling ahead on sheer principle of rescuing Kidra.

Yes, Kidra. That is why you’re here. Why you’re twisting and turning in the dark, subjecting yourself to every invisible sound and twitching shadow.

Up ahead, you hear an echoing yelp and then a thud and then a sharp whimper. Then the wispy sound of swarming fearlings as their hacking laughter grows and grows and grows. You rush forward, footsteps reverberating off the walls until you can’t hear anything except the sound. Your heartbeat joins the rhythm, getting faster until it feels like the pulse is pounding directly against your eardrums. Then your breathing—harsh, irregular, drying out your mouth as you pant and pant as you run. Your lips crack from dryness, and when you lick them, you taste blood.

The next step you take, you realize too late that something is wrong. The front half of your foot no longer touches the floor. It hangs over a precipice, and your brain processes this at the same time you feel your other foot swings with the momentum of your body. You pass the peak of the movement, and only then does the conscious part of you brain try to backpedal, try to stop motion that comes as naturally as breathing, try in vain to cancel out the one thing that takes you nearer to Kidra.

You fall into unfathomable darkness. Either you’re falling for so long that it stops feeling like gravity is dragging you deeper, or you’re falling so slowly that you fear you won’t know when you’ve hit the bottom. The thick, unyielding blackness presses into your eyes, ears, and mouth, blocking out your senses and choking you. You force yourself to inhale, wondering if you’re imagining the thin layer of particles rushing back and scraping against your throat. You cough without sound, barely feeling your chest vibrate.

There is nothing to see, nothing to look at, nothing to distract you from the sensation of falling through the void. It’s almost peaceful. You close your eyes, finding solace in the welcoming embrace of unconsciousness.

*************

There is a full moon tonight, and Burgess’s sky is clear. Pitch glances up at the moon for a few seconds, hoping the Man In The Moon can see his sneer. The soft snow creeps across the streets and sidewalks, unmarred and glinting in the moonlight. The streets are empty and quiet. Unusual for a Friday night, even in such a small town. Even in the latter parts of winter. It is a perfect breeding ground for fear born of immutable, unbroken silence. The kind that falls all at once upon the ears and hushes any noise with its sudden entrance. The perfect environment for the fearlings to carry on their work. In fact, Pitch sees a pack of them scurry between alleyways, hunting.

But he can sense it: the cloying sense of fun and determination that marks an area with believers. Be they rioting protestors rallying behind their causes or innocent children wishing upon falling stars, Pitch knows the smell of hope and justice. It makes his skin crawl on instinct alone.

He glances back to the Nightmare Men flanking him, crosses his arms behind his back, and walks through the streets. The third Nightmare Man still has not appeared, and he wonders if it is simply dispatched to another front, keeping an eye on the fearlings. If he doesn’t see it soon enough, he will recall it and remind it exactly who it answers to. In the meantime, he stalks the night with his entourage. The longer the inspection goes on, the more confused Pitch becomes.

“I can sense the belief,” he says to the Nightmare Men, “but I cannot locate the source. Show me.”

The Nightmare Men skulk ahead of him, winding through side streets until they reach the edge of the town. They motion toward the trees, and Pitch hesitates for one moment. There’s a certain spot in these woods that he’s avoided for decades. His time in the space just below it is hazy at best, painfully and excruciatingly vivid at worst. The downside to corrupting another spirit’s power is that it requires an extreme force of strength and will to keep it under his control. As laid low as he was after his defeat years ago, he had no chance against what are now some of the lowest ranks of his forces. The laugh-like whinny of the feral nightmares echoes sharply in his mind, and he flinches. Nevertheless, he clears his throat, shakes the memories loose, and continues on where they gesture.

The woods are stagnant. It is not dying, per se, but as if in a coma. Even when life breaks free of the corruption again, it will never be the same in a hundred years. Not without significant intervention, anyway.

The Nightmare Men lead him to the very lake where his final embarrassment of a confrontation had happened. It’s as iced over as it had been then. Pitch reaches up and massages his jaw where the fairy had punched him; there’s still a gap in his teeth from the hit. The Nightmare Men move to the center of the frozen pond, stare down, and point. Pitch joins them, crouches down, and brushes a layer of frost from the surface of the ice. As he peers down, he swears he can see something move just below the surface. A large, shadowed entity passes under him. But surely this could be nothing, or at least be one of his own soldiers.

He concentrates, reaching his instincts down into the water. He feels nothing but natural darkness, feels nothing but the slow heartbeats of sleeping frogs.

“I don’t understand,” he says, rising to his feet. “The belief isn’t down there—”

He glances up to his Nightmare Men, but they’re gone. He whips around, searching for them. How dare they abandon him! And then he hears a whistling sound from somewhere above and behind him. A chiming, descending whistle, like a fast-moving projectile.

He raises a shield of black sand and whirls around in time for a flurry of ice to connect with it. The shield breaks in a single point for a moment, allowing Pitch to see Jack Frost hurtling towards him, electric-blue charging up through his cane. Behind him in the sky is a swirling cloud of gold, a glint of purple and green, a large white bird, and a bulky red sleigh, all closing in on one pinpoint: Pitch, alone on the ice.

*************

The forest is pale and desaturated under the overcast light. The light is nothing but flat gray as far as you can see, though there is a haze circling around the edges of your vision. You’re in a part of your forest that you’ve never seen before, and every step takes you under a thickening tree canopy. The branches of trees you didn’t think were native here criss-cross in ways you’ve never seen before, as if creating a continuous, arched hallway for you to walk down.

Specifically, you are walking _down._ The slope of the terrain increases the further you go, and your muscles strain to keep you walking at a steady pace. The pull of gravity, however, increases the longer you go on.

You’re not quite sure what led you here, or what’s compelling you onward. Your home is a long way’s away by now, and it will take you at least a day to retreat. But there is no reason to turn back. You’re just traveling down a simple slope in a simple forest you’ve explored countless times. It’s impossible to see the entirety of it in such a short amount of time as seventy-five years. You keep moving on.

You think there might be something odd about the trees. In the vague peripherals of your vision, they seem smooth, barkless. The leaves look like pale gray-green clumps of color, like the rounded depictions of a children’s drawing. But as soon as you slide over to one to inspect it, you realize that of course it has bark. Of course the leaves are individual leaves. This is a tree—that’s just how trees look.

The incline becomes sharper. You’re practically sliding down on your back at this point. It seems odd that a marshy, lowland region like yours could have something this steep and tall. Sinkholes, your mind lands on. Of course that’s the explanation. Sinkholes.

A sinkhole with an archway of trees leading down it? Of course. Why not. The natural world has always been full of surprises, why shouldn’t there be a part of the woods like this? But this time, there’s something incongruent in the explanation you come up with. You don’t stop walking, but a familiar sense of unease settles over you. It’s so familiar that you pay it almost no mind at all.

There’s something at the bottom of this sinkhole. There is a bottom to this chasm at all. The knowledge of a definite floor to the rift enters your mind as soon as you wonder if it exists, because of course it does. You shake your head and head towards whatever is there waiting for you. Waiting for you? Yes, yes, it’s waiting for you to find it.

You have to move slowly as the slope becomes a vertical drop. The cliff has many footholds and crevices to grab on to. It’s a rock wall. No… no there are no rocky cliffs in your forest. That you’re quite sure of. It’s a tightly packed drop of soil and clay and some limestone. And so it becomes under your fingers and boots.

At this point, you strain to listen for whatever is at the bottom of the cliff. There’s something waiting for you, and you’ve ventured far, far beyond your usual territory to get to it. It’s so important that it could change the trajectory of your life. Your spouse will be so proud of you, and you can see them smiling and thanking you once you get back.

You pause where you’ve been climbing and your breath hitches. No. No, that can’t be right. They’re not waiting for you. They’re dead. They’ve been dead for decades. You blink rapidly, the haze at the edges of your vision thinning a bit. You look around at where you are, and your anxiety becomes more tangible.

You know you’re in your forest, but you see that you cannot possibly be there. The trees aren’t right. The terrain isn’t right. The air isn’t right. It feels more like the repetitive textures of an open-world video game that hopes you’re more preoccupied with fighting a dragon than examining the off-putting consistency of it all. Looking up, you see the not-right trees lining the edge of the cliff like they were planted at exact measurements on a city avenue.

You can feel the sun on the back of your neck, but when you turn to see it, there’s just a bright spot there, like a simple light source hanging stationary in the corner of a skybox. The shadows—those that actually exist—move just after the source does. The haze lifts further, and you remember the last time you experienced this sensation.

Months ago, just after creating Kidra by the pool of water. You fell asleep. You dreamed.

It’s feels like your focus crushes into a pinpoint before exploding back out. Finally, you take in your surroundings for the first time, and you feel like retching at how wrong everything looks. You feel like you’re on a children’s theater set that has too much, yet not enough, detail to be realistic. The wall you’re hanging on to is little more than flat layers of colors tinged with gradients. You’re not even truly holding on to anything—your open palms cling to the sides as if you’re a lizard on glass.

The worst part of this revelation is that you have no idea what to do with it. There is still the dream knowledge that something waits for you down at the bottom of this cliff, something desperately important. The dream logic sweeps you along, even as you remain completely lucid. A passenger trapped in a vehicle on a crash course.


	19. Mutiny

Pitch slips over the frozen water, trying to escape while keeping his balance. The Guardians are closing in on him, and he is practically naked without the Nightmare Men there to back him up, especially since there are no nearby shadows into which he can meld.

Frost’s second shot whistles toward him, and Pitch pulls up another barrier of sand behind him. The force of the icy explosion knocks him off his feet, propelling him onto the snow-covered bank. The sand shield disintegrates, and he struggles to regain himself as he hears them shouting to each other, getting closer and closer at an alarming speed. He pushes himself up from the snow, slipping one more time as he starts to make a break for the trees.

A whole barrage of powers has snow exploding all around him. Stone eggs leap out of the ground on either side of him, and try to crush him between their weight. A flock of small fairies point their sharp beaks at him and stab at any point they can reach. They rip open scratches and scrapes along his face and only narrowly miss his eyes. The flock parts to reveal a yeti bursting from a portal, three more opening beside it. Pitch skids to a halt and changes direction to avoid them, barely managing to shield his face from a bullet of golden sand that lands next to him.

_Where the hell are the Nightmare Men?_ Pitch thinks to himself amidst the panicked need to survive. A second, more terrifying thought crosses his mind: _They led me into a trap._

He almost stops his escape at the mere thought, but keeps pressing on. The trees finally surround him, shielding him from the light of the moon. He slips into the shadows, racing as fast and far away as he can manage. Once he’s deep enough into the forest, he exits the shadows and leans up against a tree, panting.

_Why?_ Was his only thought upon getting a grip of himself. _Why would they do this?_

He has an idea, but surely the Nightmare Men are neither so sentient nor petty that they would betray him. The last month or so flashes through his mind. Then the last time he had Nightmare Men as part of his forces, hundreds of years ago. They had disappeared as soon as the power he’d gained from the Dark Ages broke. As the Guardians had grown, as he had diminished, so too did his ability to summon the shadow monsters that had willingly served in his fleet in the stars. Even further back—back far enough that he can barely remember the exact details—they hadn’t so much as been summoned rather than appeared at his side while he and the fearlings tore the Golden Age asunder.

He doesn’t have enough time to contemplate what that means before he hears the Guardians hot on his trail.

“Get back here you monster!” the fairy yells.

The sound of flapping wings and pounding feet fans out through the trees. Streams of dreamsand wind their way around the trees, illuminating and destroying any shadows it crosses.

“It’s bad enough, you kidnapping that spirit, but a child?” she continues. “There’s no low you won’t sink to!”

A child? Pitch hasn’t attempted to kidnap children in ages. Truthfully, they’re more useful to him out in the wild, where they can tell other children about the terrifying and undefeatable boogeyman. He dares to stay still a little longer in the hopes of picking up more information, but the golden sand swirls his way. He quickly checks around the trees to see where the Guardians are facing, and then steals away through the trees.

“That way!”

The thundering begins again, and Pitch leaps back into the shadows to try and escape. He reaches out with his power, desperately searching for a thin section of the veil that separates his realm from this one. Something pings on his radar, and he nearly launches himself out of the shadows in shock.

The same spot he has avoided for years is an active entrance again.

It’s not too far from where he currently hides, but he’ll have to backtrack straight through the Guardians’ line to reach it. Some of the dreamsand swirls a little too close for comfort, and Pitch hurls himself back into the shadows. They’re immediately on his trail, blasting around him as he follows the shadows across their paths. Pitch concentrates and dives upwards out of the shadows, summoning his scythe and a few nightmares.

North meets him in the sky, attempting to slice him in half with his swords. Pitch swipes at them with the shaft of his weapon, deflecting them, and then he twists in the air above the loud Cossack. He lands on his feet, skidding a yard or so backwards, finally facing the full might of the Guardians in the open. All five of them turn and glare at him, drawing their weapons and summoning their magic. Pitch’s nightmares land gracefully in front of him, snorting and tossing their heads.

“Take care of our guests,” he commands them, grinning.

The nightmares glance back at him over their shoulders and huff, trotting off and ignoring the Guardians. They all watch his display fall apart in front of him and laugh. All except for the Sandman, who just watches Pitch with a fury-laced curiosity.

“That’s it?” Frost taunts, hovering on a wind ten feet above the ground. He tosses his cane in the air and catches it. “Taking my home back should be a cinch if that’s the best you can do.”

The boy re-orients himself in the air and shoots straight for Pitch again, ice winding up the staff, building for a larger attack. The fairy is right behind him, smaller fairies flanking her. She holds her swords together in front of her, aiming right for Pitch’s torso.

Pitch dismisses his scythe and attempts to meld back into the shadows right away. Frost releases his icy blast, shards slicing across his shoulder and chest, rime encasing the arm he uses to shield himself and one of his legs. He almost falls over as half his body refuses to move. Frost looks smug for a moment, but the corruption of his base still weakens him enough that he lands on the ground to pant for breath.

The fairy zips over his head, an angry scream tearing from her throat as she closes in. With his free hand, Pitch manages to summon a simple, long rod made of black sand. He braces himself, and she makes impact, her fury and momentum creating a small wave of force. Part of the icy film holding him cracks. The smaller fairies badger his face, trying to distract him from the full-sized foe in front of him.

After her first blow fails, the Tooth Fairy grunts and spins, slicing like a whirlwind. Pitch manages to deflect one of the slices, but the other blade catches his back. He bites back a scream and moves to break the ice holding him, especially as he sees the Sandman advancing, rolling a ball of dreamsand around his palms.

He manages to break his arm free, finally able to bend backwards out of the way as the fairy slices again, though he grits his teeth as the motion strains his muscles and bones a little too much. As he’s contorting himself, he takes the opportunity to whack the ice around his leg with the rod. It cracks just a bit.

He swings back up as the fairy slices down, aiming for his torso. The counter-momentum flings him around and forward, ripping the ice apart and making him stumble. He spins, hitting his back against a tree, seeing stars for a moment as the back of his skull makes contact with frozen bark. His vision clears in time to see the Guardians moving to surround him, all of them wearing the most grotesque, furious expressions. Pitch didn’t even know some of them could carry such hatred in their features.

As Pitch holds himself up against the tree, he uses one hand to try and summon some sort of backup. A small rift opens underneath him, and a few fearlings on nightmares canter out. The Guardians stop advancing, but only on principle. He can already see the dark smirk crossing Jack’s face.

The cavalry fearlings glance back at Pitch, who says, “If you have any sense of loyalty, you will fight and help me escape.”

The fearlings grin and slam their heels into the sides of their nightmares, making the dark horses rear and scream. They charge, and then veer around, riding in an increasingly tightening circle around the Guardians, who close their ranks and prepare to fight the barrier. Pitch sighs in relief. He’s about the stalk through the shadows again to reach the entrance to his lair, when a slight rumble shakes the ground.

Before Pitch or the Guardians can begin to contemplate the earthquake, oozing shadows sprout from the ground. They glisten, but do not flinch in the moonlight, and there’s a small, residual crackle of iridescent, black energy running through them. The fearlings drive their nightmares off into the woods, laughing hysterically. None of the guardians move, stunned as much as Pitch is as the shadows climb higher and higher, twisting and curling and braiding around each other as it climbs above the trees.

The wave of darkness rises high enough to blot out the moon and cover the area where all of them stand. A high-pitched droning sound—like a continuous shriek of raw fright—rises as the darkness and shadow congeal somewhat. Enormous antler-like protrusions sprout from the top of the shadow, and just beneath that, a set of eyes open. And then another set. And yet another. Eyes of all shapes and kinds—the bulging, rectangle pupils of goats, the slashed irises of frogs, eyes with black sclera and white pupils—burst onto the surface of the shadow like pus-filled boils. All of them blink at irregular intervals, and then in time swivel to focus on the tiny creatures on the ground. The shadow splits at a part. The split rips and morphs, and soon enough rows upon rows of fangs can be seen in the gaping maw.

And then it laughs.

The Guardians collectively flinch at the laugh. It’s a feeling more than a sound, one that pierces Pitch’s being and feels like it’s fusing his vertebrae together with how powerful of a paralyzing shiver works its way up his spine. He glances at the Guardians and they look like they’re going to vomit. Frost especially is trembling as he kneels on the ground, holding himself up on stiff arms, trying to control his breathing.

The shadow settles a hundred feet above them, slowly oozing and occasionally making a jerky movement as it lets every eye see down below. Soon enough, a tendril of darkness squirms its way out of the main body of the shadow creature, working its way down to the treetops and splitting too many times to be the familiar form of a hand. But the thing still uses the urchin-like spindles to hold on to the canopy.

“What have you done?” Mother Goose whispers in abject horror.

Pitch turns to her. She’s a far cry from the little girl who fell in with the Guardians hundreds of years before. But she is still as susceptible to the terror of the unknowable and incomprehensible. Pitch puffs himself up and holds out his arms, summoning up enough energy to laugh cruelly and victoriously.

“I have survived!” he cries. “Despite your best efforts and apathy and hoarding of belief, I have managed to thrive!”

He cackles and drinks in the flood of fear that spills over from the Guardians. The fairy takes a few hesitant steps toward Frost, finally working up enough courage to grab him and drag him back to the rest of them. North keeps his eyes locked on the creature, whispering curses as he reaches trembling hands into all of his pockets, searching for something. The fairy tries to keep a solid, focused expression, but through even her best efforts, Pitch can see she’s starting to hyperventilate, that her eyes are stretching too wide and darting everywhere, that the hands holding her weapons are shaking too much to let go.

With this development, Pitch envisions not just a weakening blow to spring and memory, but a steamrolling victory, with the world to follow in the next few weeks, if not days. He starts to laugh in relief. His goals are so close to his grasp that he knows only joy and contentment. He is the Boogeyman, the King of Nightmares, and the world—even the most jaded adults—with know and fear his name. His laughter becomes hysterical to the point that tears spill from his eyes because he’s won. He’s finally won. Who could begin to fight this?

And then tendrils fall over his form, closing in and crushing him.

Pitch involuntarily gasps as the shadows squeeze him, letting out any and all air from his lungs. The shadows lift him, keeping him closed in complete darkness. Something’s not right. He struggles against the grip, but the shadows only get tighter around his form. They pull him higher and higher into the air until finally the shadows swirl away from his face. Pitch sucks down air as soon as it’s available to him, but he cannot fight against the ironclad grip he’s struggling against. The fresh air reaches him only through shallow, unsatisfying gulps.

Somewhere below him, he hears stumbling and panicked footsteps. He thinks he hears someone yell “Retreat!” He can’t swear to it, though, because the vast shadow entity fills his vision entirely, its eyes rolling until they focus on him and only him.

“What is the meaning of this?” he cries. He tries to control the shadows, to make them let up, but they resist. “Release your king!”

_K-I-N-G? O-R, F-O-O-L?_

The entity raises Pitch high above its head, a motion that takes ages, despite how fast it feels to him. At the very peak, Pitch is left squinting under the light of the full moon, face to face with the spotlight of his most mortal enemy. Pitch grits his teeth and clamps his eyes shut, anticipating the impact of the ground, but they shoot open as he remembers his spirit still alone in his chambers, fighting against the darkness. He struggles against the grip of the entity again, but gives up as he can feel the downward motion begin. He glances back up at the Moon, a tear flying upward as he’s shoved down.

As the tree canopy shoots above him, he whispers to the Moon:

“Help them, you miserable rock.”

The shadows encasing him hurtle downward and swallow him whole.


	20. Creativity in the Raw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things will get intense in this and next chapter. not spicy, but def intense.

As you finally reach the bottom of the sinkhole, the dream conjures a black, square-shaped structure that was always there. It appears in the eerily precise center of the bottom. The structure, your dream tells you, is actually a metal box—iron, perhaps, given the dark patina. Its rigidity stands out among the illusory organic area.

The bottom of the sinkhole is oddly devoid of loose sand or limestone or pools of water. Given that this is only a dream, that makes sense. In fact, the dream logic tries to smooth over the inconsistency by trying to convince you that it’s completely normal for the bottom of a sinkhole to look like the salt flats. The floor is so white and as flat at the gray skybox that it reflects the light source.

 _This is normal,_ your mind says, and your dream self agrees. Your lucid self becomes dizzy trying to reconcile what you know with what you’re being told. You walk around in circles trying to merge both sides together, but ultimately you reach no compromise. Still, you know that there is something here for you; still, you’re aware this is a dream and nothing of substance exists here for you. The area around you exudes a flickering energy, moving quickly between the low-poly-esque nature of a pretend world, and the grand and tranquil wonder of a true forest. Your forest. No, not your forest. You blink, physically unmoved by the war being fought in your subconscious.

A thud comes from the inside of the metal box. It’s loud and muffled and turns the attention right to it, all of the vistas on the edge of your vision destaurating and going a little fuzzy. The box becomes the focal point, and as another thud echoes from it, it’s clear that the dream is ready to move on.

You stride over to the box. It has a smooth face, with no obvious hinges or seams in the different metal faces. It sits on top of the ground while also being buried half-deep. You reach out and touch it. Another thud rings against the top, but only the sound reverberates across it. No vibrations from the hit. Oh… the sensation of vibrations tickles your hand as soon as you register the disparity.

You try to remove your hand from the box. It remains glued to the lukewarm material, and the haze around your vision starts to creep in further. You focus, and push back. If you’re aware this is a dream, then surely you can take control of it. This is in your head, this is your illusion. You consciously take a deep breath. The air smells of nothing until two seconds later when a pitiful spritz of brine wafts across your nose, like special effects in a dark ride plagued by desynchronization glitches. But you focus on your hand, specifically on your forefinger.

 _Move,_ you order it in your mind. It twitches.

 _Move!_ you order again, trying to make it curl or release from the box, if only for a second. But your finger remains stationary. You sigh one more time, then refocus. _At the count of three, I will tap my finger. One. Two. Three._

There was a second’s delay, but then your finger rockets away from the box, almost taking your whole hand with it. It points to the sky for a second before being suctioned back to the box. But it’s a start.

On the edges of your hearing, there’s a distant, low rumbling. The dream instincts kick in, and your heart immediately thunders cartoonishly against your chest. Your legs want to run. You check around you, check to make sure nothing’s sneaking up on you while you’re trapped at the bottom of this ravine, but you cannot see anything coming. You _know,_ however, that something is coming. For you. Specifically for you, and you. Must. Escape.

At this knowledge, the dream and the land around you shifts. The world desaturates a little bit more, the light source dims, and deep, thin shadows pop in. An off-kilter droning sound gets louder, echoing off the fake cliffs. It’s coming. It’s coming for you.

There’s a creaking sound next to you. A square section of the box flips open, revealing a dark interior. It’s safe in there. You can hide in there. It won’t find you in there. You fight against the tension, against running and hurling yourself headfirst into the promised safety. You turn back to the hand that’s still stuck to the box.

_On the count of three, I will remove my hand from the box. One. Two. Three._

You yank your arm back, and for a second, your hand refuses to move. But after the least delay, it flies backwards, free of the pull. Until it starts to move back on its own again. You stand firm and will it to stay. It trembles, outstretched before you, neither obedient nor defiant.

 _Curl your fingers,_ you say to yourself. The tips of them flex with a twitch. _Again._ You create a tense fist that stays closed. _Open._ Your fingers refuse for a second, but then release into an open palm again. 

It’s coming for you. It’s almost here.

You look down at your legs, ordering them to move. You take a jerky step away from the box. Another step, and then one step back. You hear a bellow behind you—deep, guttural. The ground seems to shake as something large bounds toward you. _Turn,_ you tell yourself. One foot slides around, and then the other. As you spin, your vision swims, and you can see the box at the same time as you see what’s actually supposed to be in front of you. You almost lose your balance.

It’s here.

Your vision surrenders to your control, and you see large dents forming along the sides of the cliffs above you. There’s another bellow, this time one more familiar that sends a shot of terror up your spine to cloud your head. You nearly lose control again, but as your body is snapping back to face the box and reach out, you stop yourself. You wrench yourself back to where you’re facing the invisible creature. You realize that the fear you’re feeling is true and yours, not an illusion created by the dream to announce a vague threat.

But now, you’re curious. If this creature is a reminder of the ones that killed you so many years ago, you want to see this through—need to see this through. You stand your ground, digging your boots into the limestone sand that now appears in sketchy detail. You hold up your hands before you and summon black iridescence to your fingertips.

It reaches the bottom of the pit and charges. Sand flies up with every invisible footfall. It starts to head your way, but you concentrate and redirect half the sand to the side. You shield your face against what does reach you, and the handfuls of grains that reach your hands coalesce, revolving around each other once they reach your magic. The mixture transforms into something malleable, not unlike the mass you sculpted into Kidra. You watch the sand change, become imbued with your power until it becomes a small, iridescent pellet in your hand. It is heavy, dense, and spinning so fast that it looks like it’s perfectly still.

You watch the sprays of sand get closer, closer. When the footfalls dash into the sand barely ten yards away, you wind up and hurl the pellet right at where you imagine the creature should be. But for the few seconds when it’s flying through the air, a stray thought creeps up on you and asks, _What do you think you are even attempting? Hide._ The image of the box and the hole flashes in you mind. You ignore it.

The pellet impacts something, and there a visible wave of energy radiates out, followed shortly by an explosion. The wave tries to throw you backward, but you crouch down and use your power to mold steel-like handholds from the sand to brace against the force. You’re starting to understand, after all these years.

The invisible creature is forced backward as well, sliding all the way to the opposite wall where a cloud of dust bursts up around it. The dust settles on the outline of the creature’s body much like the tree splinters and dirt had the night you died. The creature is huge, with an arched back and skinny legs. It roars.

You look at your hands, still brimming with power. You stand and rub your hands together, hoping your next move works on the principles of dreaming if not because of your magic. As the creature recovers and darts back to you, you hold your hand out in front of you, trying to feel something. You give a burst of power to the magic, and it encompasses your whole hand. Slowly—but absolutely as quickly as you can manage—you move your hand as if slicing through the air. A similar feeling of the grains of sand compressing and condensing in your power starts to form through the air around you, and you feel your fingers catch on a point. You focus on that point, draw your hand back, and summon a little more power. And then you shove your hand out, piercing a hole into the air.

As you tear through the world, your power releases. It crackles up in a vertical bolt, leaving behind a towering pillar of energy. Shards of the world splinter off like chunks of glass, dissipating into nothing as they fall to the ground. Jagged holes line the points in the sky on either side of the pillar, as if they are leaves on either side of a vine. Behind them is nothing but an inky void, swirling occasionally into the marbled colors of oil.

As the creature approaches again, you grab for one of the holes and hike your leg up to place it in another. The sharp edge pierce your hands, but don’t draw blood. You climb, reaching and leaping from foothold to handhold, gathering more of your familiar energy every time your fingers dip into the voids. You focus your gaze on the flat ceiling of the dream skybox. Perhaps it’s arbitrary, and if you were more practiced, you could find another way out. As of right now, you know the only way out is through there, and you’re sick and tired of this realm.

Higher and higher, you climb, stopping once your reach the top to tear through the dream again and create more handholds. You climb tirelessly for what feels like hours, but the ceiling is still just out of reach.

 _It’s moving…_ you realize.

A roar comes from below. You chance a glance and see the holes snap and become larger. There’s another roar, somewhat closer. It’s climbing.

You scramble up a few more handholds, a new panic settling into your limbs. Your arms are straining now, despite you having felt no pain in your hours of climbing. And then you notice a thin haze creeping back into your vision. Your breathing becomes labored, your lungs feel compressed and overworked, your fingertips start to slip off the holds and blood covers them, barely visible under the magic flickering over them.

The ceiling keeps moving farther and farther. The creature shakes the air as it climbs and your feet slip. Catching yourself just in time, you pause in the ascent to catch your breath. Your vision swims, showing you the box that’s still sitting open at the bottom of the pit, how far you are in front of the pursuing creature, and the ceiling that is only just out of reach all at the same time. Your limbs freeze, and they refuse to move even when you order them. You beg them. You plead with them because you are so close. The magic at your fingertips dwindles as the haze thickens and the landscape becomes more believable.

It’s behind you. It’s chasing you. It will kill you.

With the last bit of your conscious energy, you face the stubborn ceiling, pry your hand from the handhold, and wind up.

“Let. Me! OUT!”

Your voice shatters the illusion, and as you thrust your hand forward again, you summon up every last ounce of energy you have available to you. The magic goes beyond your fingertips, encasing your hand, your wrist, all the way up your arm, crackling with such intensity that you close the eye closest to it on instinct.

You stab forward with your hand, grabbing for the ceiling. Suddenly, it’s just an arm’s length away, and as your fingers pierce through it, the flatness fades into absolutely nothingness. It’s havoc on your eyes and mind, but you concentrate on the crackling energy surrounding you. The beast’s roar fades into silence. The fake forest melts into a pool of muddy colors. The pit collapses in on itself. All knowledge the dream wants you to believe scrambles into flashes of irrelevant images and emotions.

You grab on to the edge of the dreamscape with one hand. You drag your other up, and the magic jumps to it like lightning. You shove your hand into the tear beside the other and pry open the realm just enough that you can haul yourself up through it. When you do, gravity shifts violently, and you feel the sudden sensation of falling.

Your eyes open in time for your head to bang against something rigid. You see stars, but blink them away. You blink again. It’s completely dark all around you.

“Hello?” you call. It echoes back across a vast space.

You try to stand, but the floor swings under you, and you hear a chain clinking somewhere above you. Spreading your arms out, you feel the cool walls of a metal box surrounding you. Three sides are solid, one side has bars. A cage. You rub your head where it had hit one of the bars, and then you reach for your bow and quiver. They’re gone, as is your satchel.

You wrap your hands around the bars and try to squint through the darkness. You think you can hear the familiar, haunting babble of the fearlings. Between that and the exhaustion bludgeoning its way into you, you’re sure that you’re still in Pitch’s lair. The density of the shadows might be evidence enough, really.

A thought occurs to you, and you flex your hands. Dreams are one thing, and your own dreams are another, but if your power can mold and affect the Sandman’s sand and enhance Toothiana, if it can mix with and amplify Bunny’s flowers and eggs, if you can tear holes through your dreamscape…

Kozmotis’ words about his ship come back to you: “The aesthetics of you humans is unfortunately bound to the rigidity of science, rather than the whimsy of magic.”

You brace yourself against the bars, reaching one hand out. You concentrate, trying to drive away the want for more sleep, no matter how tempting the idea of a full rest is. You won’t find that here if you sleep for a thousand years. You summon a little bit of magic around your fingertips, and the iridescence is visible against the dark, even though your hands are not. You strengthen it, feeling the oil-slick marbling surround your fingers. You gently swipe through the air in front of you until you feel your fingers catch on something again. Unlike the dream, which felt light and crumbly, the shadows you’ve latched into are dense, yet wispy.

You summon more energy, chancing the exhaustion and letting the crackles spiral up to your shoulder again. You grab the shadows in your fist and release the magic. It shimmers and sparks around you, and it spreads out around the whole room in arcs of iridescent lightning. You tug at the shadows, feeling them start to become pliable under your grasp. But just as you start to pry them apart, they tug back.

A wave of terror physically rumbles around you. The chain above you rattles again, and you hear either dozens of echoes of it, or dozens of other chains on other cages. Your magic stops swirling under your control. It sparks wildly for a second, a jagged piece coming straight for your cage. Right before it makes impact, however, it pauses, and then it silently flows back into the now whirling darkness.

You try to grab your hand back, but its stuck. You tug again and again, but you can’t take it back. The huge, whirling entity of shadows wails a laugh and disappears upward, taking some of the absolute darkness and your magic with it. Whatever has been holding your hand in place releases it, and you sigh in relief, trying to keep the implications of your power within a huge piece of shadow out of your mind.

You lean against the bars of the cage for a moment, other hand dangling out. Just as you catch your breath, something clamps down around your wrist. Frightened, you jab at it with a bit of magic, but it not only doesn’t let go, it gets a tighter grip.

“Simply marvelous,” a familiar voice purrs. “Can you do that again, love?”

A gray hand grabs one of the bars. You cry out and try to pull away, but another gray hand keeps your wrist in place. The being holding you pulls close to the bars of the cage, close enough that you can see his face. A death mask made of cutting angles, high cheekbones, and glowing, empty eyes.

Pitch Black draws in so close and grins so wide—too wide—that you can see all of his sharp teeth at once. His form squirms, bulbous shadows creeping off of every joint of his like stray whiskers. He squeezes your wrist so tight you can feel the bones scrape against each other and threaten to fracture. You cannot look away, though, only feel yourself spasm with sobs as you look at the grotesque face of this man. He yanks your arm, forcing you against the bars with a yelp, and then he twists it until you’re whimpering in pain.

He gets right next to your ear and growls, “This time, scream for me.”


	21. The Choice

He is drowning in the shadows, tendrils of darkness dragging him lower and lower, clogging up his throat, crushing his heart. Pitch had expected an impact before oblivion took him, and the lack of intense pain is probably more disturbing. He doesn’t fight, though.

The shadows encase him in a way he’s unused to. They have always needed to be wrangled before he could use them, and he had always thought himself strong enough to wield his influence over them. Even at his weakest, the shadows bowed to him and only him—for the most part; he contemplates the years of torture with the nightmares. Pure shadow, ethereal and looming, had been his domain for as long as he had existed. He was born of it. Now, though, they move without his direction in calculated synchronization with each other. Weaving, pushing, swirling. A few whispers make their way to him, babbling and laughing as they dive in and out of his bones.

He cannot see anything in front or around him, and he doesn’t expect to ever again. Surely, he’s dreaming before he’s completely consumed. Surely, there is nothing left for him. He closes his eyes, conjures the image of his spirit, and waits for the end.

 _Please,_ he begs no one, anyone, someone. _Please spare them my fate._

There’s a flash of light behind his eyelids. He reckons it to be just one of the hallucinations that appear in the corner of someone’s eye when they’re tired or stressed. There’s another one. Pitch blinks a few times, trying to rid himself of the apparition, but it feels like something has stuck there. It’s as annoying as a grain of sand and feels as big as a shard of glass.

_“You beg from behind walls. I can hear, but cannot see or act.”_

The voice is even, with almost completely neutral intonation. Yet, it’s soothing.

_“You are a curious being. Born beyond my eye. Born not as you are now.”_

There’s something familiar and utterly foreign about the voice. He’s never heard it before, but he feels like he’s seen the owner.

_“You please my knight and encourage them onward. You yourself are intriguing in your lack of inherent purpose. I cannot act while you are concealed this way. Find your way into the open, and we shall see if I have something for you.”_

Knight… knight… There’s something tickling the back of his mind. He’s sure he’s heard a reference to it recently. But moreover…

 _I cannot find you. I am finished,_ he calls out. There’s a feeling from the voice, halfway between a laugh and a scoff.

_“Are you? Or have you made the choice to be so?”_

The response takes him aback. He cannot form a rebuttal before the shadows remove themselves from around him, tossing him prone on the hard ground. Once his throat and lungs are free, he gasps and coughs, rising onto his hands and knees. The shadows fly from around his eyes. He rubs them until he can see clearly again, and then gasps.

He’s on his knees in the dungeon of his lair. A Nightmare Man and untold amounts of fearlings surround him. The fearlings twitch just out of sync with each other, creating a creepy rhythm that even a thousand metronomes cannot track. Behind all of them, the monster from Burgess settles among the darkness, becoming the darkness of the lair itself. Pitch feels it expand to the walls behind him. He dares glance its way, and two and a half sets of various eyes with jagged teeth scattered between them meet his gaze.

A death rattle starts up in front of him. Pitch turns to watch the Nightmare Man swoop close to him. He flinches, but its wisp of a shadow cloak barely brushes him as it passes, depositing something in front of him. He looks down and sees the unconscious, shallowly breathing body of a young girl. She can’t be older than eight. She squirms in the midst of all the shadows and nightmares, curling into the fetal position as distress crosses her face. A small pack of fearlings up front edge toward her, but the Nightmare Man shoos them away.

“Pitch… Black…” it says. He looks at it. “Unfit… Leadership…”

Pitch sighs. “I’m not entirely sure how you came to that conclusion. As far as I’m concerned, this is nothing but petty mutiny.”

“Distracted… Careless…”

His head shoots up and he attempts to stand. The fearlings swarm him, forcing him back to his knees.

“Where are they?” He grits his teeth and tries to struggle, but he’s held fast. The Nightmare Man swivels its head to the shadow entity. There’s a moment of complete silence before it resounds.

_C-O-N-T-A-I-N-E-D_

“Contained where?”

Neither the fearlings, Nightmare Man, nor entity answer, though one fearling shakes something in its hands. Pitch recognizes it as the spirit’s satchel. He struggles against the mob again, but settles back down.

The Nightmare Man motions for the fearlings to let him go. Pitch starts to leap up, but it catches him by the throat. The little girl whimpers and twitches at his feet. The Nightmare Man raises one of its hands and creates a swirl of shadow around it. It grabs Pitch’s hand and presses the shadow to it. He tenses, preparing for pain, but instead the magic just jumps to his hand. On instinct, he feeds and controls it. He’s familiar with this kind: it’s a dense, corrupting energy he used to use to transform children into shadow minions much like the fearlings. Their innocence would feed into the darkness and boost the troops’ potentcy. It was a practice he held for a long time, though he’s not quite sure why he started. Pitch looks quizzically at the Nightmare Man, and then after a moment, at the unconscious child. The Nightmare Man releases his hand and points to the girl.

“Prove… Loyalty…”

The fearlings close in their ranks, leaving little means of escape or any movement at all. Pitch looks at the child laying on the ground. He shakes his head a little.

“This is unnecessary.”

“Prove…”

“There’s no tactical need for this.”

_P-R-O-V-E W-O-R-T-H_

That one stings. The emanation of the order crashes over and through Pitch, paralyzing him for a second. He braces himself against the force in an effort not to collapse again. The Nightmare Man swoops down, grabs his wrist, and starts leading it toward the girl.

“True.. Family…”

A numbness swirls around his mind and drags it down to settle. They're right. Where else could he possibly go, who could he possibly turn to? The shadows birthed and molded him. His inherent nature is that of manipulator, liar, cheat. And if he is so volatile, best beware his sting. It doesn't matter if he is corrupting an innocent child—asleep, won't know the difference when they're born anew, a mercy to have them embrace the cruelty of the world. The shadows are reminding him just exactly the kind of monster he can never run away from being.

_I am, after all, the Boogeyman._

At some point, the thoughts stop being reminders whispering out from the shadows, and become mantras he learned long ago that he recites to himself by heart. What is there even left for him at this point?

The Nightmare Man releases his wrist, but he continues to move it closer to the helpless thing. He’s barely a foot away, willing, though not enthusiastic to corrupt this child. He hovers his hand over her for one more second, making a silent apology, when there’s a sudden wave of energy from above and a shriek that rings out.

“ _ALISAH!_ ”

All of them look in the direction of the scream. Pitch feels his heart lighten as he searches the shadows for his spirit, and the magic he's carrying disintegrates, unable to feed from him anymore. They’re safe! They’re alive.

They’re brandishing something made of their iridescent magic, running across temporarily solidified shadows. They stumble a few times as their power is imprecise and as the other Nightmare Man rises behind them, claws outstretched.

Pitch takes a step toward them, but then senses the chittering fearlings on the move. They, too, are focusing on the spirit’s approach, but a scant few are breaking from the mob to go to the child—his spirit’s great-granddaughter, he now realizes. Two fearlings grab her, one of them juggling the girl’s feet and the spirit’s satchel. The child’s face screws up in traumatic terror. Pitch glances at the spirit one more time, then to the distracted Nightmare Man beside him.

He makes up his mind.

Pitch dashes over to the girl, skidding through the fearlings. He wraps his arms around her and yanks her out of their grasp. The fearlings glance around for a moment, surprised. Pitch kicks the empty-handed one into the larger mob, and then turns to the one with the satchel. He distorts his features to resemble his shadowy form. It recoils, and Pitch snatches the satchel from it.

“I don’t believe that belongs to you,” he snarls, kicking out again. He misses, but the fearling dives into the shadow mob on its own.

Pitch looks down at the child in his arms. A wave of nostalgia and deja vu comes over him, and he adjusts his hold to one that properly supports her.

“Don’t worry,” he whispers to her. “We’ll get you out of here.”

Pitch looks around, trying to simultaneously see where the spirit is and to gauge the best exit for them to take. He sees a route that he knows leads to the Burgess exits, and it’s largely unguarded. That area is a risk, but they stand a better chance out in the air than in here. He stands, jostling the satchel, which falls open. A spot of calm glow catches his eye as it falls from the pouch. The bottle shatters on the stone, and between the shards is the petal of a rare flower, one that glows with the faint whiff of springtime. A pack of fearlings immediately turns to the source of hope. They spit and run to it. Pitch quickly leans down to scoop it up, glass piercing his palm.

As he stands back up—one arm holding the child, the other hand clenched around the petal—he feels more sure of himself than he has over the last few months. He takes one step to try and get clear of the mob, but freezes as something slices through his back and pushes out of his chest. Too-long, spindly claws clench and rip. Pitch tenses in a silent scream as shadows and black sand start to bleed out of his chest.

A sound leaks out of him, strangled and incoherent. He moves his lips to form just one word he can’t quite get out. He tries again, and again, voice getting stronger each time until he’s able to eke it out, desperate and pitiful.

“H-hel-p,” he says, barely registering the springtime warmth growing in his fist.

*************

In the darkness of the cage, you clench your mouth shut against the pain Pitch is twisting out of you. He looks warped, closer to how he looks when he becomes pure shadow. You hate it. He grabs the back of your head, curling his fingers into your hair, and drags you against the bars of the cage again, so hard that you’re sure you’ll have barred bruises soon.

“Come on now, darling. You’ll moan for me, but not scream?”

A presence appears in the cage with you, watching from the opposite corner less than three feet away. You pull yourself as far away as you can while still being manhandled. Pitch lifts your head away from the bars and slams you back against them. A strangled noise escapes.

“That was a good start. But you can do better than that.”

You lock eyes with him, and you can feel the tears starting to pool. He tsks and gently runs his other hand over your eye. He caresses your cheek so tenderly that you immediately close your eyes and start to lean into the touch. Nails suddenly rake down your neck, digging into your skin. Your eyes fly open and you press a hand to the pain. Pitch grins again as you look at your hand. It’s covered in blood.

The presence approaches you, starting to cover your feet. You pant and try to move farther away, but you’re at the very edge. Pitch grabs your jaw and forces you to look at him, bringing his face mere centimeters away. His grip on your head tightens even more, and you feel strands of hair start to rip out. The angle is uncomfortable, and it’s still dark, but this close, you can see that there’s something off about him. Not just that he’s warped his features into something monstrous, but those monstrous features don’t even make sense. The tendrils swaying off of him. The hollow, glowing eyes. No scar. You blink at this, double checking to make sure you’re seeing correctly. Nothing, just dark gray skin, like the rest of his body. You try to shake your head. Something isn’t right about this. The presence creeps up to your shin.

“Why?” you croak out. Pitch bares his teeth. You swear more appear each time he does.

“This is who I am. I told you as much months ago. Shadows, darkness, corruption—it all goes hand-in-hand, and I am the ruler of it all.”

A wave cold despair crashes through the area, and Pitch looks behind him with a curious expression. He gazes away for a few minutes, hand clenching around your face. The presence climbs higher, wrapping your legs together. You think you can hear voices, but they’re muffled and very far away; you can feel them rather than hear them. In fact, you can feel a whole lot of them. Fearlings. Tons of them. Rising up from the deep abyss and congregating below you. Pitch glances at you, and returns his attention to you.

“That’s right. You feel all of them? They’re excited. We’ve just received some good news.” He tilts your head side to side for a second. “But why keep you in suspense? I'm sure you’ll enjoy this show.”

He releases you and fades back into the darkness. The dark itself parts, a veil lifting just for you to see. You press yourself against the bars, ignoring the presence slowly ooze its way up further to your knees. Squinting, you peer out. Below you, the gathering of fearlings and taller, terrifying creatures surround something. You push yourself against the bars, the pressure starting to dig into your cheeks.

They surround a figure on its knees, held down by the shadowy fearlings. There’s something right in front of the figure, something small. It’s far away, but you can hear it clearly. You glance around. This lair, this entire realm is nothing but shadow. It’s magic. Your learned logic makes you want to sit and observe and gradually introduce things that might change it. But not only is there no time for that, you’re sure it would be impossible to take the exact same scientific approaches you’re accustomed to to get to the bottom of it. You’ve barely made progress in your understanding of it all in three-quarters of a century because of your meticulous processes. There’s room for that, you still believe. But not now, not immediately.

The presence creeps up to your hip, and you finally try to squirm out of it. It clamps down tighter. You raise your hand and smack it. It tenses for a second, but does not move. You take a deep breath and summon a bit of power to your fingers and shove your hand deep into the mass of darkness.

A squeal rings through your head. You grit your teeth against it and twist your hand deeper into shadow. It releases your body and shivers, still squealing. But you can feel it become pliable, feel it start to relent under your power. You shove your other hand into it and focus on what you need.

One—you need a way out. The shadows aren’t going to let you go out of any goodness in any heart they might possess, so you need to do this for yourself. Two—you need tools. You’ve been unarmed and you’re only just understanding the instinctual feeling of piercing the core of something and molding it. You’re elbow deep in a solid shadow, and it’s squealing gets quieter and quieter the more will you exert over it. Three—you need to get down there. The exits are somewhere down there. Despite the masses of shadows and monsters, that way is the only way out.

With this in mind, you start to move your magic within the presence. It starts to crumble under your touch, but one more jolt and it solidifies. You shape it quickly, not only because you have to make your escape, but another, larger shadow starts circling the cage. You don’t look at it, but you can feel its interest in you and what you’re doing. You snap the presence into a rod, one end barbed and jagged, the other into something like a torch. In that end, you set a bit of your power into it, and it flickers. It’s crude compare to what you think you could do, but it will work for now.

There’s another wave of terror and despair that spreads through the room. It slams you against the back of the cage, and you feel it reverberate like needles sewing your sinew up and down your body.

_P-R-O-V-E W-O-R-T-H_

You glance down again, startling when you see that the gathering is much closer now. Perhaps it was always this close and the shadows were creating an illusion. Maybe you were moved. Maybe both. The important things you take note of now, though, are that Pitch Black stands with his arm being guided toward the other figure. It’s an unconscious child squirming in their sleep. Her sleep. Your insides run cold as you recognize the little girl as Alisah. The shadow creature lets Pitch go, and the boogeyman continues to reach a magic-covered hand out to her.

“No,” you whisper.

You stumble as you pull yourself up to stand in the cage. It’s free-swinging, and the lack of balance nearly has you sprawled out on the floor again. The large shadow circling you moves faster.

“Alisah!” you cry. There’s no response, from either your great-granddaughter or Pitch.

You take the magic end of the rod and ram it against the lock. It sparks and crackles for a moment, but holds. You slam it again, grunting from the effort. Sticky liquid drips down your neck and shoulder. One more time, and the lock finally gives. You kick open the door, and then hesitate, realizing you’re about to step into the abyss.

The large shadow hovers below you, a toothy maw slowly opening under your feet. Pitch’s hand is closing in on Alisah. You jab the rod into the shadows and slice through them until you feel that familiar catch. You jab it into that catch and the shadows congeal in a thin ribbon. You’re not sure if it will hold, but there’s. No. Time. You push yourself out of the cage and run.

You inhale deeply, and with all of your will and breath, you shriek, “ _ALISAH!_ ”

All of the attention turns to you, and you see Pitch dismiss the magic from his hand, eyes brightening and a small smile forming when he hears your voice. The fearlings start to swarm you, though, clambering over each other to reach you. You slice through fearling after fearling with the barbed end of your rod, but with every shadow you disperse, ten more swarm to take its place. You almost lose your footing on the wrangled shadows underneath you several times, but you manage to stay aloft long enough to make your way down to a safe height and leap to solid ground.

A disgusting moan rolls through the crowd of shadows. You recognize this same feeling from when you first arrived in the lair, and from not too long ago when Pitch had prevented you from looking at whatever had invaded his chambers. You freeze as you look upon one of them, the only thought going through your mind being _Wrong. Wrong! WRONG!_

It flickers its face into the image of Pitch’s face and body. It grins so wide this time that you swear it’s head is going to rip off. It raises one hand, and shows off its spidery fingers caked in your blood. You feel bile rise in your throat.

 _Move, please move!_ you order your legs.

Unfortunately, this is no dreamscape. The nightmare creature jerks toward you, and it’s all you can do to bring the rod up in front of you, magic end flaring. It gets closer, closer. Your grip shakes. The creature breaks into a rush and takes only seconds to get near you, opening its impossibly large mouth like a snake. Before it can make contact, you swing the rod like a baseball bat, trying to will your magic to burn it somehow. As a muffled _clang_ resounds, it’s distracted enough that the tension in your body releases, and you start backing away from the monster. You turn and run, batting your way through the fearlings.

The other Pitch is somewhere up ahead. You keep an eye out for Alisah, swatting and stabbing through the mobs. Suddenly, you hear glass shattering. You swing your way forward in time to see the familiar, tall, and lithe figure of Pitch Black stand up straight, one arm supporting the limp body of Alisah. Your immediate reaction is a horrid mix of relief and disgust at the sight of him. It gives way to determination as you spot the patchy scar running up his neck. You rush in that direction, needing answers and confirmation. Tears start to well up in your eyes at the thought of Pitch truly only playing with you all this time. You raise the rod’s magic side, and search the air around you for another catch. You find it right as a thick shadow swoops over you, lands behind Pitch, and then stabs its long fingers through his back.

You halt and gasp in true horror. Your back sears with sympathetic, phantom pain. Your breathing becomes labored for a second, and in that moment, you feel the fearlings grab onto your arms and ankles. Fear starts to well up in you, shutting down your responses, diminishing your overclocked adrenaline.

The nightmare creature slowly removes its hand from Pitch’s back, and viscous black starts to seep out of the stab wounds. Pitch hasn’t screamed or struggled at all. Once the claws are gone from his back, he sinks to his knees, his body heaving breaths in and out. Despite everything, he’s still clutching Alisah, who is thankfully still asleep. You’d rather she have recurring nightmares than trauma.

The nightmare creature shifts until its in front of Pitch and Alisah. Its face contorts into what you can only guess is a semblance of a smile. It raises its claw again, summoning shadows so black you want to vomit just looking at it.

“N-no…”

Pitch raises his other hand, and as his fist opens, you think you can see bright wisps of something escape from it. He tries to turn his body, turn Alisah away from the being.

“Stop!” he cries hoarsely.

The creature slowly raises its claw, and you can’t stand it any longer. You channel your magic through the rod and swing it around you. What fearlings you don’t disperse, you yank away from until their grips falter. You tear through the few yards to Pitch, swinging around so that you're covering Alisah’s body with your own. You try to hold the rod out, gathering more energy to it for another strike. As you release the charge—right into the core of the shadow—it brings it claw down, touching you with the black magic instead, lightly digging into the deep scratches on your neck.

There’s a half-second where everything stops, and then a pain unlike any other shoots out across your neck and face. You scream and stumble, and you think you hear your name being said behind you. You slam a hand over the pain, summoning magic to your fingertips to cover it. As you do, you feel the shadows reach and reach toward your fingers. At the same time, the magic gathered around your rod discharges. Unconstrained, chaotic, wild. The force of it shoves everything in front of you away, though not outright destroying it. But in the hazy edges of your vision, you can see some of the power linger, crackling around the dark masses of fearlings, and especially around the nightmare creature. There’s a sound like a collective hum of satisfaction.

They start moving back in around you when an explosion off in the distance distracts them. Suddenly, masses of fearlings swarm away, and the nightmare creature swoops after them.

“We have to move,” begs a croaking voice behind you.

A shaking hand grasps your shoulder, and prompts you forward. You take a step, ear now ringing from the proximity to the pain on your neck. The hand on you is as much leaning on you for support as it is guiding you. You take another step, and then another. Once you start moving, it becomes easier, and you move faster and faster. But you can feel the shadows closing in.

You’re led through a certain opening, around winding corridors that you find yourself seeing more and more clearly as the pain grows. The chittering and skittering of the fearlings feels far away, yet right behind you. The hand pushes you one direction and then another until it grabs you and pulls you into a narrow passage. It spins you around so that your back is against a wall. Finally, you can see Pitch—the real Pitch—panting, trembling, shadows still oozing from his chest, a small drip of it falling from the corner of his mouth. Still clutching Alisah to him. He coughs and closes his eyes for a moment.

“I’m so sorry,” he sobs.

He cracks an eye open and reaches out, cupping your cheek. His fingers trail down to the pain at your neck, and you hiss when he makes contact. You slam your hand to it again, summoning more magic. The shadows reach for it again, but you don’t wait. You grab the shadows, fighting them, trying to make them pliant and moldable. But these are too strong to submit to your will. So you fight and pull and tug until you wrench a handful free from your wound, flinging them deeper into the shadows away from you. Some still manage to wriggle in deep, though, but a good half of the pain has subsided.

Pitch reaches out to you again, holding the back of your head, running his fingers through your hair, and smiling. A shot of fear pierces your heart, and you jerk away from the touch. The wrong face, the wrong smile, the pain flashes through your mind. Pitch looks confused and broken when you move away, but he doesn’t try again.

Shouts and explosions echo up the corridor with increasing frequency, chased by a low sound laced with a high-pitched droning of a mosquito. Footsteps come closer and closer. You raise the rod up to greet whatever’s coming, only to realize that it’s broken. The other half of it must be back in the large chamber you were in, must have shattered from the last big charge. All you have left is a jagged piece of shadow, completely void of power. It feels fragile in your hand, and you think the slightest pressure will cause it to crumble.

Hissing, shouts, magic flying everywhere, voices getting closer. You blink your eyes, nausea settling in as one sees the area around you in detail, while the other is close to blind. The droning rumbles get louder and more insistent and shake you to your core. You collapse to your knees, and Pitch follows you. He brings one of your hands up and places it on Alisah. You force your limb to move so that you’ve got your whole arm around her. She’s cold and unresponsive, but breathing. You sob and hold her close, whispering apologies to her.

Your other hand is covered by Pitch’s. He chokes out your name, and you look at him. The flow of shadows down his front has slowed, but not stopped. His usual gray pallor is off; it looks a little warmer, though still ghastly pale. He closes his fingers around your hand and just holds it. The shouts get even louder and even closer. They’ll find you any moment.

He gently brings your hand to his lips for a small kiss, watching you. “I love you,” Pitch says. You squeeze his hand in return.

“Well,” comes a drawling voice through the din. “I sure coulda gone the rest of eternity without hearin’ that.”

You look over, and just beyond the entrance to the passage is Bunny, the rest of the Guardians skidding up behind him. They all look tired and battle-weary, and keep glancing back the way they came, weapons at the ready. The sound of innumerable fearlings and the terrible nightmare creatures roars and rings up the corridor.

Bunny and Sandy slide into the passage. Bunny beelines for Alisah and plucks her right out of your grasp. You cry out and grab her arm. Bunny looks at you, takes your hand, and pries off your fingers.

“Don’t worry. She’s safe,” he says firmly. “We’re gonna get her and you—” He glares at Pitch. “—and even you outta here before you can hurt yourselves any more.”

Bunny slides by Sandy as he coos, bounces, and speaks softly to Alisah. He touches a finger to the center of her forehead, and a green glow spreads out and fades. Alisah’s face softens and her furrowed brow eases into peacefulness. She reaches in her sleep and curls her fingers into Bunny's fur.

Sandy already has wads of dreamsand in each hand as he approaches you. You and Pitch look at each other, and then back at the him. He has a solemn, apologetic look about him. He sighs and reaches out his sand-covered fingers. You feel Pitch tense, but you squeeze his hand again, and he stops resisting. It’s over. It’s done. You close your eyes, and you might be asleep from sheer exhaustion before the sand can work its magic.


	22. Kozmotis

Pitch has pleasant dreams for the first time in a long, long while. He eases through the dreamscape, too used to the nature of dreams to be taken in by them completely. He knows where he is, though he’s more curious as to where he is outside of this. The Pole? Did they just eject him into space? Shoot him into the center of the Earth? A part of him hopes it’s Ganderly. The irony would soothe his curiosity.

His dreamcape is indistinct. There is mostly blackness broken up by swirls of gold, no doubt a side-effect of the Sandman’s power. The dream tells him he’s in a tunnel, possibly one in his own lair. It’s just darkness, and not a particularly thick kind. It's flat, like a matte painted wall. Darkness has layers to it, and they can be beautiful and comforting, or so thick as to choke.

Pitch brings a hand to his chest and rubs over his sternum. The phantom feeling of being captured and choked in shadow is still ridiculously fresh. It reminds him of being trapped by the feral nightmares. A dreamstate starts to close in as his mind wanders, but he fights back. The few times he’s slept in the last few centuries, he’s never gone without lucid dreaming, and he’s not about to give himself over now. Not while in the hands of enemies. That’s what the Guardians still are to him. He’s been laid low this time, and they’ve seemingly opted to let him live, but the centuries of antagonism and ignorance under their belts won’t be so easily forgotten. That cannot be overturned so easily. No one attempts to wake him up, so Pitch wanders through the tunnel, waiting for the dream to direct him where it wants him to go.

It feels like weeks later when the tunnel finally opens up into a larger room. Pitch sighs in relief, ready to exit the tedium. He crosses the threshold to the larger room and immediately squints and blinks in the bright light.

“Kozmotis! You’re finally home.”

He feels arms wrap around him—or the dream tells him to feel arms around him—and as he finishes adjusting to the new light, someone grabs his hand, lacing their fingers through it. The woman from his visions swims into view, and she leads him into a house.

It’s warm and cozy. Looking around, Pitch realizes he’s being shown through a Golden Age household. The cosmic seas brush up against the doorstep, and the windows show off how sublimely vast space is. Stars glitter yellow, orange, blue, and white, twinkling at different frequencies as the light reaches his eyes from thousands of light-years away. He lets go of the woman’s hand, approaching the windows. It’s been so long since he’s seen anything close to a different arrangement of stars. The formations over Earth went stagnant ages ago.

The woman approaches him from behind and loops one arm around his elbow. She leans her head on his shoulder and sighs.

“I missed you so much.”

The dream compels him to reach and hold her shoulder in return. He doesn’t fight the motion. At this point, even dream contact that only exists when he remembers to register it feels heaven-sent. He turns to face her, half-expecting and half-hoping to see his spirit in his arms, but the woman remains. She is beautiful, but he does not know her as more than a face veiled in shadows. She smiles up at him, and he feels the dream making his heart beat faster, hears a famous song from back then start to play. She moves one hand to his shoulder, and her other to his outstretched hand. They start swaying.

As they dance, he can see every glimmer, every rapid movement her eyes make as she glances over his face. Her dark hair is loosely braided and tosses itself back and forth when she moves. Small lines crease at the corners of her eyes due to how wide she's smiling. The intoxicating smell of old, well-worn parchment reaches him, and as he breathes deep, he feels a pressure on his chest. The dream has conjured glorious raiments and armor that he hasn't bothered taking off right away because _this_ is too important. He leans down to her, and she rises to meet him halfway. As they kiss, something stirs in Pitch’s memories. That nagging feeling of forgetting something important gets stronger and stronger as she eagerly presses into him and gives one playful nip to his bottom lip. He draws himself back, again trying to make the dream give him his spirit. Yet again, their face has not replaced hers. She pulls him in so that their foreheads touch, looking so deeply into his eyes that she could see his naked soul, and Pitch closes his eyes, giving himself over to the dream.

His wife catches him up on all the news he’s missed since being out in the field.

“Your daughter—”

He tries to hide a smile. She only says “Your daughter” when their child has gone and done something impressive, yet precocious.

“Your daughter went joyriding again the other day and caught herself in a rip tide of stardust. It took three hours chasing her down to wrangle her and the schooner back to the house.” She shakes her head and sighs. “I had to miss a whole meeting about planetary rezoning proposals to make sure she didn’t fling herself into a black hole on accident.”

He takes a sip from his glass of wine and nudges her with his shoulder. “Yes, I’m sure you were utterly _devastated_ you had to skip that one.”

She opens her mouth to form an excuse, but can’t and just smiles. “Well, you’re right. Maybe not. But she’s grounded.”

“She’s six.”

“She put herself in danger for the umpteenth time!” She rubs her eyes and shakes her head. “I’m so glad you’re back. I have enough trouble wrangling the other council members for a simple vote. I need help around here.”

His face falls a little. If there’s one thing he feels guilty about, it’s that being a general keeps him away so long. He wants to ask for a post closer to his family, but he’s one of the strongest the armies have ever seen. He feels obligated to stamp out the menaces wherever they appear so that all may stay safe and that the Golden Age can continue. He reaches over and plays with his wife’s hair. He’ll request a closer post again when he has to return. But he’s just gotten home, and he refuses think about leaving again right now.

“Where is she now?” he asks.

“Her room, where hopefully she’ll take some time in her boredom to think about what almost happened.”

She pours herself more wine. He leans over and clinks his glass with hers, and keeps leaning in until he’s kissed her again. It’s been so long—months since he’s been home. He’s missed being close to someone like this; his colleagues and subordinates are fine soldiers, but they are no replacement for this kind of intimacy and trust. He pulls away, and she looks up at him with tears barely forming, so happy he’s come home alive again. He wraps his arm around her, glancing down the hallway where he sees a small flash of movement.

“Well, if she’s in her room— _like she ought to be_ —” He raises his voice for the last bit. The movement down the hallway pauses. “Then I know exactly where to find her and let her know I’m home again.”

His wife looks at him quizzically. He stands, winks at her, and empties the last bit of wine from his glass. He puts a finger to his lips and starts walking, making sure his boots echo off the walls as he heads down the hallway. He can sense something moving in the periphery of his vision as he walks along. As he reaches her bedroom door, he stops and knocks slowly and loudly three times.

“Sweetheart!” he calls. “I’m home.”

There’s no answer, but there is a loud crash behind him. He turns and sees a large, crystalline plant—a souvenir he’d brought back some time ago—overturned, the geometric roots poking out from the spilled, rocky soil. Behind him, he hears the door softly open and close with a click. He chuckles and turns back to the door. Just as he reaches his hand out to knock again, the door swings open.

Pitch is nearly flung out of the dreamstate as the young girl looks identical to the picture in that locket back in his lair. For a moment, the dreamscape flattens and the details become lacking in the isometric view of the scene he has. The girl remains the only high-detail piece of it all until Pitch closes his eyes and allows the dream to take him again. When he opens his eyes, the haze is back at the edges of his vision, but he wills himself not to care. And just like that, his daughter is back, grinning up at him and trying to hide the fact that she’s panting in a way that a grounded six-year-old who definitely hasn’t left her room shouldn’t be.

“Hi, Daddy!” she says.

“Hello, darling.”

He kneels down and holds his arms out. She hesitates for a moment, and then runs into them. He hugs her tightly, and lifts her into the air, twirling her around and planting a kiss to her cheek. She giggles and hugs him tightly around the neck. He has to shift in order to breathe, but he’s not going to disturb her. She pulls back and knocks on his chest. The armor he’s wearing makes a dull thudding nose.

“Why’re you still in your armor?” she asks, frowning. “You don’t have to leave right away, do you?”

“No! Of course not.” He starts to carry her down the hallway to the living room. “I’m here for a few weeks this time.”

“Can we go sailing around the asteroids tomorrow?”

“I heard you were grounded, young lady.” She makes such a pitiful face at him that he can’t help but laugh and hug her again, tickling her sides until she shrieks in laughter of her own. “All right, then. Anything you want to do.”

The rest of the evening is a blur. They all eat, they talk, they catch up. Naturally, his daughter has a vastly different telling of her schooner adventure, one that doesn’t involve losing control in a rip tide, and she bristles at the suggestion that it was reckless. Eventually, his wife just puts her face in her hands in frustration, though he can see her smiling and slightly shaking in laughter as she shakes her head back and forth. He genuinely wants to impart some wisdom while he’s here this time, perhaps have his daughter realize that a bit of caution now and then is not the same thing as a blockade of fear to be vanquished. He’s capable of being better than this, even if he has to leave for long stretches of time. He must be better.

The night grows late, and his daughter eventually runs out of steam and starts to lose her fight against sleep. He picks her up and carries her back to her room, telling her stories of far-off places that may or may not exist.

“The Pookas have whole mechanical creatures that they use to take care of the timelines,” he whispers, gently tucking her into bed. “And each and every one of those creatures is an egg.” 

He sits at the edge of the tiny bed. His daughter rubs her eyes, but settles under the blankets. His heart wrenches. She’s so young, so small, so reckless. So peaceful as she lay there. He hopes that one day, she will become a proud woman who uses her strongheadedness to cut through every challenge life throws at her. He can't wait to watch her grow up.

“Why?” she murmurs. "Why eggs?"

He doesn’t know that part, so he pauses before saying, “They’re eggs… because the Pookas are rabbits. And these rabbits… like eggs.”

“That doesn’t m-make se-sen-sense,” she says, yawning.

“This life rarely does, my dear. But that’s what’s so wonderful about it.” He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. “Goodnight. I love you.”

“I love you too, Daddy…” And she’s asleep.

He quietly leaves her room, where his wife is waiting in the hallway. She threads her arm through his and leads him to their room. Once inside, she presses her hands against his chest, narrowing her eyes.

“How about we get you out of that stupid armor, Koz?” she says, reaching around his waist and pulling at the buckles.

“Yes ma’am,” he replies, kissing her. Between kisses and reaching for the buckles, he says, “I’m going to take her out sailing tomorrow. Just wanted you to know because she’s supposed to be grounded.”

“That’s okay,” his wife replies, sighing in frustration at that one particularly stubborn buckle. He kisses her forehead. “I was going to un-ground her once you got home, anyway. I just didn’t realize it would be so soon.”

“I could leave…”

“I forbid you from stepping outside of this room.”

“Good. I didn’t want to go, anyway.”

It takes a bit of fumbling on both their parts, but he’s finally freed. His wife unceremoniously tosses it to the back of the closet, making him wince and hope nothing is damaged. Three seconds later, all concern flies away as she’s in his grasp, weaving her fingers through his hair and refusing to let him go as if he might disappear in an instant if she lets him. He wraps himself around her, pushing her up against the wall and dragging her even closer to him, as close as he can get before he's forced far away once more.

“Ah. Oh, um. Hm…”

The strange, familiar whisper jolts Pitch back into lucidity. Furious, he glares around until he spots a rapidly coalescing spot of gold. He starts to pull away and berate the Sandman, and he feels the dream start to fall away completely. He tries to hold onto the feelings, but when he turns around, there’s no one in his arms. The room melts into a void of black and gold, a small, sourceless spotlight creating an area between Pitch and the apologetic Sandman.

Pitch starts to make his way over to him, snarling, “Sanderson!”

He runs, but doesn’t move anywhere, struggling to grasp the strings of the dream and pull them under his control. He wants to claw the golden pest to shreds, pummel him until he’s purple with bruises, make him feel utterly helpless and broken. He wants to make him feel as empty and alone as he has for thousands of years. Always alone, courtesy of the Guardians shooing away his believers, worshipers, anyone who actually acknowledged his existence. Millennia of isolation comes crashing down around him.

Pitch struggles against the increasing weight of an uncontrollable lucid dream until he’s on his knees, panting, glaring at the Sandman he’s no closer to. The breaths turn into sobs.

“I can’t even indulge in a dream without you interfering? You must watch my own fantasies play out and disperse them?” He tries to reach for the shadows to throw even a weak mist at him. But nothing responds. “I surrendered to you! In my own lair! You put me here in this dream, and no doubt my true body is chained up somewhere I can be forgotten. I don’t know if the spirit I love is alive or dead!

“What more could you possibly gain from denying me a dream? A simple dream where, for once, I’m _happy?”_

The Sandman looks taken aback, even guilty. “I’m sorry, Kozmotis. I didn’t realize that would break you out of it.”

Pitch snaps his head up and glares at him. “You know my name, Sanderson.”

The Sandman nods sadly. “I do. I didn’t realize I knew it better than you, Kozmotis.”

“There is only one person on this planet I allow to call me by that name, and you are not them.” He softens for a moment. “They _are_ all right, aren’t they?”

He nods, and Pitch sighs in relief.

“Maybe I’m asking too much, but can I see them?”

He shakes his head.

“Why not?!”

The Sandman shifts uncomfortably. “Kozmotis, do you—”

“If you insist on keeping me prisoner, I’d appreciate the least courtesy of using my name.”

 _“I am,”_ the Sandman insists. He approaches Pitch slowly and reaches out. Pitch flinches and closes his eyes. There’s a soft pat on his shoulder, and he cracks open an eye. The Sandman takes a deep breath and says, “You are Lord High General Kozmotis Pitchiner of the Golden Age armies. Or, you used to be, until somehow you fell to darkness and became the Nightmare King.

“That dream you just had… You know as well as I do that pure dreams are not so well-organized as that.”

Pitch knows very well, indeed. Even the most plot-driven dreams are surreal at best, abstract expression at worst. But every once in awhile, there’s a kind of dream that manages to create a convincing stage with almost no effort. There are still inconsistencies; it is still a dream, after all. True coherency and a level of detail like that is only possible under a specific circumstance. Pitch recoils from the Sandman and crawls away from him, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, Kozmotis,” he whispers. “I would have tried to reach out sooner if I knew you had forgotten it all. I thought you had chosen this path on your own.”

The dream collapses, and the real world roars back into existence. Pitch jerks forward upon waking, thrashing his arms. A golden chain connects his wrists, and as he examines his surroundings, he sees the Sandman watching him from beyond golden bars. The Island of Sleepy Sands. That’s where they’re keeping him.

He covers his mouth with his hand, stopping and starting to speak several times. The Sandman leans as close to the bars as he can without crossing them.

“That was a _memory?_ ” Pitch eventually manages to choke out. The Sandman nods and starts to speak but Pitch cuts him off, charging at the bars and screaming, _“AND YOU KNEW THIS WHOLE TIME?”_

The Sandman jumps away from the bars, summoning a small clump of dreamsand. Pitch shakes his head and sinks to his knees. The laughter starts slowly, but grows until it shakes bits of golden magic loose from the ceiling. A wife. A daughter. Happiness and comfort. Cloying domesticity. He’d had it all. Everything he’s craved over the last millennia, he once had. And no one but the Sandman knew that the monster they’d sworn to hunt down had once been just like them. He looks back up at the golden spirit and grins madly.

“I didn’t think you possessed a single cruel bone in your body, Sanderson,” he says. “I’m learning so much today.”

The Sandman sighs, but he’s interrupted before he can whisper anything else. A glowing rift opens next to him, and Frost leans out of it.

“Sandy! We need you right now!”

He glares at Pitch as he slips through the portal, and the Sandman quietly follows. The rift closes back up, and Pitch—Kozmotis?—settles back in his cage, thinking. Surely his wife and daughter cannot still be alive. The Golden Age was filled with many wonderful things, including longevity, but even death was a certainty back then. And then, of course, he himself had completely ravaged the Golden Age itself. Who knew if things had remained the same after that?

“Maybe the Sandman knows,” he mutters to himself.

He tries to recall the woman in his mind. Instantly, her entire visage comes to his mind. No shadows cling to the outlines of her form anymore, obscuring and blocking her. He can see every part of her, and of their child. A part of him longs for them, but even having experienced the memory dream, he does not recall anything specific about his previous life. No charming vignettes spring to mind, nor any particularly strong flashes of familiar emotion. Maybe it will come back to him over time… like the other flashes he’s had, he realizes. However, as he conjures up the image of his spirit in his mind—the protectiveness he feels, how he longs to be near them again, how badly he needs to feel them in his arms and against his skin—he cannot help but wonder if he wants to fully remember his past life.

The last thing he remembers saying to the spirit is, “I love you.” He’s not sure he wants to remember another he loved so long ago rather than see his spirit again and hear the same words from them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pitch can have a little happiness, as a treat


	23. The North Pole

You wake up with a shiver of cold, the first shiver caused by something other than exhaustion and fear that you’ve felt in what could be a month or so. As the chill gust brushes your hair over your nose, you squirm under a thick down comforter that’s wrapped around you. When you shift, an actual mattress creaks beneath you. You resist opening your eyes and let yourself fall into a small illusion of comfort: a memory of waking up in the mild chill of a southern winter, your spouse at your side and reaching for you in their sleep as they also shiver. You can almost feel their arms and legs wrap around you, hear their contented sigh as they finish shifting on the bed and fall back asleep. And you feel yourself falling back into peaceful slumber as well.

Soft ticking and tinkling sounds wander your way. They’re muffled, located in another room of wherever you are right now. A light smell of pine, vanilla, and cinnamon wafts to you as well, driving you deeper into your nostalgia. It smells like Christmas—or like every white Christmas you’ve heard songs praise and seasonal movies portray. You’ve never experienced one yourself, but the want for one has been so ingrained in you since childhood that you can’t help but feel comforted by the mere idea.

There’s a quiet knock on a door. A door somewhere beyond the comforting darkness and dreams of gentler, simpler times. You groan and turn over, facing away from the source of the sound. The knock comes again, a little louder and firm. You try to ignore it even as you become more coherent and the possibility of sleep starts to melt away. But you still refuse to open your eyes and let it go completely.

There’s one more knock, and then a gentle, feminine voice calls through the door, “If you’re awake, I’m about to come in. I just want to check on you.”

The door creaks open behind you, and someone slides into the room. You feign sleep in the hopes that you’ll be left alone to cocoon yourself in the comforter and fall back into wonderful oblivion. Your visitor steps over to the bed and tsks.

“Still asleep,” they whisper. “Poor thing…”

Their fingertips brush your shoulder, and then move to stroke your hair. As soon as they make contact, your stomach clenches and you jerk your body away. You roll off the bed, your eyes flying open. You land on the floor with a soft thunk, most of the impact cushioned by the blanket. But your vision is another story.

As you open your eyes, a mild migraine cuts across your face. You squint, trying to focus, but one eye is seeing things more brightly than the other, disorienting you. You blink the eye, trying to even things out. It’s still bright. You blink it a few more times, but there’s no change. You end up winking it shut and covering it with your hand. Someone leans in to your line of vision: a young woman with her dark hair tied up in a thick ponytail. Her warm eyes draw into concern.

“Oh, dear,” she whispers, looking over you. She turns and calls, “They’re awake!”

She rushes around the bed and wraps an arm around you, helping you sit up. There’s a rush to the room, and Jack Frost, Toothiana, and North fly in. The young woman helps you stand, and you glance around the room. Half of it looks like it was cleaned recently. The other half looks like a storage area, complete with dust motes lazily dancing in a sunbeam. Your cloak hangs on a hook next to the door, and your boots are right underneath it. The walls are warm, knotty pine slats that criss-cross in ways that remind you again of rural, rustic, cozy cottages brimming with light and happiness as a snowstorm swirls outside. In fact, you scan your eye over to a wall where a thickly frosted-over lattice window is set in to it. The cold draft sweeps through again, and you shiver a lot now that you’re out from under the comforter. The Christmas aesthetic feels almost cloyingly obnoxious now that you realize you’re at the North Pole.

“You okay?” Jack says. You turn your attention back to them.

“I’m… I’m fine,” you reply.

Jack looks a lot better than he did the last time you saw him. When the Guardians ambushed you in your own home. He still moves a little stiffly and still has dreadful bags under his eyes, but he’s more expressive and conscientious now that he’s close to his element.

The woman helps you sit back on the bed. You try to open your eye yet again, and you keep it squinted open despite how odd the different levels of light are. The Guardians wince as you do.

“What’s wrong?” you ask. You try to crane your neck and look past the doorway. “Where’s Alisah? Wh-where’s Kozm—Pitch?”

Toothiana kneels on the bed next to you and places her hand on your shoulder. The others close in a little bit, glancing at each other. Toothiana breaks the silence.

“Alisah is fine. We returned her to her parents and we’re keeping a watch on their place.” She smiles. “She was a little exhausted, but a few nights of pleasant dreams put her back right, and she doesn't seem to have any lingering fear.”

You relax at the news. You wish you’d had more time with her, and a part of you won’t feel completely fine until you see her, but there will be time later for that. Your eye starts to water and you rub it with the heel of your hand. The Guardians trade a few more silent glances.

Jack mutters, “Hey, go easy on that.”

You pull your hand away. Your vision is still lopsided. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s nothing to be overly worried about,” the woman says. “We’ve been keeping an—We’ve been looking over it for the last few weeks.”

“How long was I asleep?” You blink through the minor pain. “And where’s Pitch?”

“You’ve been asleep about two weeks. You’ve healed rather well.”

You check your arms and reach a hand up to your face. There’s still a little pain when you press, but it’s not too tender. You look around for a mirror.

“Let me see.”

North dashes off and returns a few minutes later with a small hand mirror. While he’s gone, Toothiana wraps an arm around you and slowly starts rocking you. You gently remove her arm, but she still stays kneeling on the bed next to you, speaking slowly and soothingly. You can barely concentrate on what she’s saying as the other woman and Jack move off to the other corner of the room and start murmuring to each other. You catch only a little bit of what they're saying, but the young woman's name seems to be Katherine. Once North gets back and hands you the mirror, they all focus on you, waiting.

Your iris is almost completely black, a glittering iridescence that easily camouflages your pupil. Looking closely, you can see the pupil’s been dilated beyond normal. Several of the red blood vessels are also dark gray, and jagged streaks curl over your cheek and down your neck. You take a deep breath and bring a finger up to the marks. There’s a tingle when you touch it. It doesn’t hurt necessarily, but it feels uncomfortable.

“I think one of those tall creatures did this.” You remember the pain from its touch. How disgusting the shadows felt as they wriggled under your skin. “But they didn’t get Alisah with it.” You lower the mirror and look at everyone, nodding. “Worth it. Gonna be hell to get used to, but worth it.”

They release a collective sigh of relief. North reaches over and pats your shoulder. The stories were not overly exaggerating how jolly and kind his smile was. Receiving a proud smile from Santa Clause throws you back to childhood again, and you’re set at ease. Except for one thing.

“And Pitch? Did he survive?”

More glances, more unspoken worries, more tension between them all. They’re not saying something, and the more they don’t say it, the more uneasy you get.

“Where’s Pitch?” you demand. Toothiana reaches out for your hand. You grab it away from her and stand. “Where is he? Is he okay?”

“He’s not here,” Katherine says.

She holds her arms out like she’s trying to calm a wild animal. You shake your head and try to cross to the door. Jack and North block your way. Things are getting very claustrophobic very fast, and your last encounter with the Guardians plays through your mind again. You sway and summon magic to your fingertips, hoping they won’t call your bluff because you’re still so tired you don’t think you could muster much more than that. Jack readjusts the grip on his staff a little.

“There’s no need to get agitated,” he says. “He’s not here. You’re safe.”

“But is _he_ safe? I saw one of those creatures stab him through his chest!” The tears start, and the Guardians start looking at each other again, Jack and North backing up further. Toothiana and Katherine keep a closer distance. Your breath picks up. You’re cornered, just like last time. But there’s no Kidra to help you escape.

“Please,” you whisper, looking each of them in the eye in turn. “Is he okay? Is he alive?”

North clears his throat. “Regrettably, yes. Man In Moon ordered we bring him alive and stabilize him.”

Close your eyes and feel a tear run down your face. You smile.

“Please take me to him.”

“No.”

“I need to see him! You say he’s okay, but I need to see for myself—”

“He’s not here at the Pole,” Toothiana says. “You’re completely safe here. He can’t harm you anymore.”

You look at her, horrified. You look at the others, and their perpetual pitying expressions suddenly make sense. You shake your head.

“He didn’t hurt me.”

“It’s okay—”

“He didn’t hurt me!”

“He kidnapped you and held you in his lair for several months,” Katherine says, her voice almost cracking. “He kidnapped Alisah. She's just a little girl.”

“No.” You shrink under their gazes. “No… His fearlings, they took us from the forest—”

“This will take time,” North says. “But you will recover. Stronger than before!”

“You’re not listening to me!” you scream. “You’ve never listened to me!”

You raise one of your hands and search the air in front of you, trying to find a catching point. A migraine shoots across your head, and you close your eye, shaking as you search and search, but can’t focus enough to find anything.

“Jack, get Sandy!” North cries.

Toothiana hovers next to you and tries to grab your shoulder. Katherine calls something out, you hear a deep honk from far away, and then flapping wings. Jack hurls a small snowglobe to the other end of the room, whispering something you can’t make out.

“Calm down! We’re going to help you!” Toothiana says. She grabs your wrist.

You grab hers with your other hand and try to yank her off of you. Your grip falters and slips, and you end up ripping out a few of her feathers. She yelps and instinctively backs away, rubbing the spot that hurts. The feathers settle into your hand, reaching for the magic still hovering around your fingertips. As your magic swirls around them, the feathers curl into it and beg for a memory, one to express what you need to convey, exactly as you need it to be told. In the background, you hear a portal opening up. You turn in time to see the Sandman emerge from the swirling rift in space. He floats in, takes one look around, then raises his sand-filled hand.

“Listen to me!” you scream, backing up and clutching the feathers tighter.

The magic starts to grow around your hand, slowly spinning up your wrist, and your vision starts to tunnel. Your back hits the wall. Sandy takes a moment to aim and then launches a bullet of dreamsand your way. You try to duck out of the way, instinctively bringing the hand clutching the feathers to protect your face. The bullet of sand explodes around it, mingling with the growing magic. You feel the dreamsand reach towards it, and then accelerate.

Drowsiness overcomes you, and you sink to your knees. Shaking your head, you barely see the Guardians watching an iridescent, golden haze seep through the room. Your torso sinks to the floor, and your eyelids flicker for a moment. As the Guardians start for the door, the haze covers them and you. At once, in front of your open eyes, a scene starts playing out.

_You wake up in a hollow log, scared, verging into paranoia. The Guardians are coming for you, and you cannot overpower them. They’ll take you. You search the area before moving quickly and quietly away from there. You cannot sense them right now, but they ambushed you; they’ll still be looking._

_You sit by a pool in the dead of night, back against Kidra. Tired, lonely, conflicted. You hold the corrupted petal and wonder if this will actually work. You can’t go to the Guardians for help—they’ve made up their minds about using your power for themselves. Especially the Sandman, whose help hinges on your “cooperation.” But Kozmotis—Pitch. He hasn’t completely stayed away, you’re sure of that, but he let you go from Burgess, hasn’t approached your place until the other night to return your items. Your conversations with him over the previous months can’t have all been lies._

_You have to know for yourself. You have to hear it from his mouth. You yourself are such a terrible person—accessory to massacre, at the very best—that you see no other means of companionship. Two scorpions can at least be together on equal terms, even if they are still venomous to others. You curl your fingers around the black petal and whisper, “Help.”_

_He appears shrouded in darkness, and speaks to you in the familiar voice you’ve grown to love. And you are so relieved, overjoyed, wary, upset, lonely. Interrogation follows._

_“How much was a lie?”_

_“Not the important part.”_

_You fear he’s going to run away, so you grab him. You know the truth. You’ve seen the truth. You want to live with the truth. Pulling him into the moonbeam, Kozmotis and Pitch become one. He cannot run away anymore, not from this. You kiss his palm and lean into his touch. He holds your hand, voice quavering, eyes searching yours for a trick._

_“And what if I’m lying even now?”_

_“This is the first time in either of my lives I’ve been sure about a choice.”_

_There’s a whirl of emotions and passion and pleasure, and somewhere beyond this vision, you hear the awkward mumbling of the Guardians, even as it skips over the most private details you want to keep for yourself. You two still end up pressed together as the sun climbs higher over the trees._

_“I’m sorry. You’ll never know peace once_ they _get wind of this.”_

_“I have an eternity ahead of me of things happening. I’m not too worried.”_

_Pools of darkness. Sinking. Horrible creatures surrounding you and you cannot concentrate anymore. Pitch screaming at them to go away, clutching you as the nightmare creatures take you both._

The haze lifts, and you’re on the verge of sleep again. The golden sand didn’t cover your eyes, but it got too close to fight against, especially with the energy your power ate up. You feel someone lift you from the floor and place you back on the bed. Their voices sound so far away, but you try, you desperately try to concentrate long enough to parse the words. Only one whisper cuts through the want for sleep.

“I think they might be telling the truth,” Sandy says slowly. “No, listen—no, we should still keep them apart for now. But… Please follow me, and call Bunny. There’s something I should have told you all ages ago.”

Someone gently tucks you under the comforter again, and the warmth and softness and residual effect of the dreamsand takes you back into sleep. As soon as your eyes close, another veil of haze—not quite as strong as the last one, though—overtakes you. Even more than last time, you know you’re dreaming, but cannot do anything about it. The dream guides you down a corridor until you reach your home, the house you and your partner bought.

Their face lights up when they see you, and they capture you in a hug to take a selfie commemorating move-in day. They hold you there, and keep holding you until you sense something is wrong. You turn to see their lopsided face, the one they had after the sweetener sent them into a stroke. They touch their face and glance at the sweetener bottle in your hand. They look at you, crying.

“Do you really love him more than me?”

Alisah appears in the arms of her grandfather, who has Jordan’s ten-year-old face. You look around, but it’s too late. Your spouse is gone. You didn’t even see them leave.

_Wake up, please,_ you beg yourself.

“You still made the poison for them,” Jordan says. “And then you didn’t bother coming back home.”

He walks off, carrying Alisah with him. You’re compelled to follow, even as you keep silently screaming at yourself to wake up. Right before they disappear into the ether, Alisah collapses onto his shoulder, glittering shadows slowly spreading across her body and warping her limbs and face. There’s a thunk, a bellow, and the large, humped outline of the creatures from that night charges at you again. Just as it reaches you, it becomes a large, snarling version of Kidra, angry that you left them alone, never came to find them, they were loyal to you. Kidra bites down over your form, picks you up, and flings you away.

You awaken with a small gasp. Most of the imagery from the dream snaps away, but the lingering sensation of guilt remains. The cold draft cuts through again. Rising quietly from the bed—they’ve shut your door, but you can hear someone just on the other side of it—you walk over to your cloak. You wrap it around yourself and throw the hood over your face. Dragging the comforter, you squeeze through the odds and ends until you’ve fought your way to the window. You quietly pry open the window and let some fresh, freezing air in, gulping it down despite the cold scraping against your throat and lungs. Carefully, you perch yourself on a few flat surfaces and look out.

It’s snowing. Immediately, you press yourself to the glass. You’ve never seen snow before, let alone a whole expanse of it. If it weren’t for the temperature and lighting, you swear you could be looking out at a desert.

You watch your first snowfall, alone and quiet, wrapping the comforter around you, imagining it to be his arms. You wonder where Kozmotis is, and if he can see the snow, too. And then the tears fall, one after the other. You keep as quiet as you can, because even though it’s been ages since you’ve cried long, hard, and ugly, you don’t want the Guardians to come in. You don’t want to explain to them that you genuinely miss Pitch, that you chose to ignore your family, that you ran away and hid from every problem you caused once you had the opportunity.

Eventually, the tears slow down, and you’re just left with a pounding headache for your troubles. You sniff, and see that the moon has risen in the sky. The half-moon, where Selene’s perpetually closed eye is just able to see the world. You try to forget everything and place your hand against the bitingly cold glass, reaching for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo! thanks for reading. ~~this is effectively the end of the first part,~~ so i'm gonna take a small break to catch up on my writing before continuing to post. next chapter will be out on july 15th.
> 
> in the meantime, feel free to reread, leave a comment or kudos, and dont forget that those things are like crack to fic writers and go leave kudos and comments on another fic you read this week. and bookmark it to keep track and get email updates.
> 
> thanks for reading!


	24. A Gilded Cage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back :D

“It’s not gonna bite you, it’s just snow!” Jack yells. “Just frozen water!”

You glance up at Jack as he hovers on the wind, tilting his head as you stand in the doorway to the workshop, refusing to take another step. You’re shivering despite the thick, cumbersome coat North gave you. It’s been about a week since you first woke up, and the Guardians have agreed to let you roam a little more. They’re still watching you closely so you don’t make a break for it, but you can’t imagine making a successful escape from the Arctic on your own. Maybe if Kidra were here. The pristine, unmarked snow glistens and glitters in the sunlight, reflecting a lot of the sun. You tug the scarf covering your damaged eye down a little more, just to be safe.

“I dunno, Jack. I’m from the south. I could survive a hurricane easily, but snow is… a little terrifying.” You dip your toe down and let it sink about an inch into the soft, white substance before drawing it back. “It’s pretty, though.”

“Cool, cool… Hey head’s up!”

You glance up again in time for a snowball to smack you in the face. The cold stings your face, and as the snow either falls away or melts on your cheeks, you feel a sensation overcome you. Your heart lightens, and you feel the need to move, to run, to… play, even.

“Oh, geez, so sorry,” Jack calls. Even though your eyes are closed, you can hear him shrug sarcastically.

 _That little—!_ He just shot you with magic! The playfulness spreads across your whole body, and you try to fight the smile making its way across your face. You wipe the snow off.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re actually that sorry, are you?”

“Nah.” Jack flips over in the air, snatching another handful of snow and packing it into another ball. He takes a long time to act out lining up his next shot and lobs it at you.

You jump out of the way of the snowball, and then lean forward to pick up your own handful. Jack starts flying farther and farther away. You start packing down the snow in your hands. It acts mostly like the wet sand you and other kids spent hours on the playground shaping into dense balls of torment. The gloves you’re wearing make it difficult to handle, but like hell you’re going to hold something this cold in your bare hands. You finish shaping it, and wind up, looking for Jack. He’s even farther away, and flying higher. He cups his hands over his mouth.

“You can’t reach me from there!”

He’s right, and you take one more wary look around before taking a tepid step into the snow. It’s less deep than it looks, though the clunky boots on your feet might have given you an extra inch or so. You take another step, then run a few steps, figuring out how to balance on frozen water. You finally make your way over to where Jack’s hovering a mere three feet over the ground, having come down the closer you got.

“Hey! Having fun?” he asks, smug grin on his face. You shove your snowball into his face. He just laughs and wipes it off.

“Yes, yes I am.”

You take a deep breath, and despite the harsh chill going down your throat, it’s wonderful to breathe fresh air again. The days are short up here, though they’re getting longer as it gets closer to the equinox in a month. Seeing and feeling the sun’s warmth after so long in the dark is a luxury. Jack lands on the ground and starts gathering some snow into a small mound on the ground. He looks up at you and motions for you to get closer. You lean in.

“Look, you’ve never had a snow day in your life, right?” You shake your head. “Then grab some snow and help me make a snowman.”

You shrug and try to lean at the waist to grab some snow, but end up on your knees and up to your elbows as you gather snow and push it over to where Jack is using his magic to whip the snow into large spheres. You’re surprised to find yourself warm, sweating, and out of breath.

“That seems like cheating a little bit,” you say. Jack pauses and purses his lips.

“Y’know, you might be right. Your first snowman should be done the right way.” He steps away from the base and motions for you to take over. “Have at it.”

You sigh and glare at him, but he just shrugs and leans on his staff. You start in on it, rolling up a slightly smaller sphere and lifting it on top of the base. Jack helps position it on there, but for the most part he just stands back and watches you. Eventually, you forget he’s there, and a childish glee takes over. You decide to go for broke and make it a three-tiered snowman, and the head almost doesn’t survive. You mostly pile the snow on and sculpt around it, trying to get all the lumps out and make it as smooth and pretty as possible. You feel a different energy start to flow through you, and your fingertips darken to your iridescent power. Just after, a crystalline, ice-blue power reaches toward it and mingles with it. You’re curious, but the compulsion to forget everything and just build the snowman takes over. You’ll ask someone about it later. Jack suddenly shows up with pieces of clothing and other bits and bobs. You shove poles into its sides for the arms and place scrap wood and pieces of colored rocks in for buttons and eyes. Finally, Jack hands you a traditional Santa hat, lifting you up a bit when you can’t reach the head on your own. You both stand a few yards back, arms crossed, looking at your creation.

“Not bad,” Jack says, pouring something from a thermos.

He hands you a steaming mug of cocoa and sits right down in a snowdrift. He pats the ground next to him, and you plop down. Your butt immediately freezes, but you ignore it in favor of taking a sip of the cocoa. You pause for a moment, surprised and amazed. You take another.

“Holy shit,” you say.

“Yeah, North makes a mean hot chocolate. And no offense to him, but don’t let Bunny try and tell you otherwise.” He breathes a bit of cold over his mug before taking a sip. “I’m not one for hot food—obviously—but I make an exception for this.”

You sit there, watching the land around you shift with the winds swirling over the snow. It’s peaceful out here, even if you’re still freezing. But the longer you sit there in silence, the more you find your mind drifting to Pitch. To your dead spouse. To Jordan and Alisah. You gulp down the delicious cocoa before it goes cold and also to try and distract yourself.

“About fifty years ago,” Jack starts. Your stomach clenches. Here it comes. “I was in a similar position to you—no friends, no believers, only had a passing relationship with other spirits. Worst of all, I had no direction in my life.” He points to the sky, where a small, faint sliver of the moon is peeking out. “Manny didn’t really speak to me until then. I was basically alone for three hundred years, wondering why I’d been given a new life. Around that time, Pitch started regaining enough of his power to try and take over the world again.”

You tense up and clench your hands around the mug. “And?”

He hesitates a moment, then says quietly, “At one point, Pitch roped me into a position where I kinda ruined Easter, and by extension, almost ended belief in the Guardians altogether. And you know what I did?”

He looks at you. You shrug.

“I ran away. Straight to Antarctica. And then Pitch showed up again, asking me to join him.” He looks right at you, a confused expression on his face. “And I almost did.”

“Really?" You blink, opening your mouth in surprise. "You?”

“Yeah. I was so lonely, so convinced that I was a hazard to others, so _frustrated_ that Manny had chosen me to be a Guardian despite ignoring me for so long that I was this close—” He holds his fingers a centimeter apart. “—to throwing everything away and just siding with him out of desperation and spite. And the most messed up thing is… I honestly believe Pitch was genuinely offering friendship. Of all the promises he made about sharing power and having the world believe in us and bending it to our wills, the only thing I believed then—and now—was when he said he was lonely and just wanted a family.”

You look away from Jack and concentrate on your cold mug. Suddenly, the thermos creeps over to you, straight through your new blind spot. You tense and flinch, and Jack pauses for a moment before refreshing your cup. You shove the cocoa to your face to avoid looking at him.

“This is just a long-winded way of saying that I believe you. Mostly.”

You peek at him over the rim of your cup. “You believe me about…?”

“That Pitch didn’t hurt you. Kind of.” He reaches out and yanks on your sleeve as you try to stand and walk away. “Look, look… I don’t find it hard to believe that Pitch wants a friend. Or… y’know, something else, I guess. Companionship. I know as well as you and him that not being seen for so long can _wreck_ you.

“But at the very least—no matter what you say did or didn’t happen—I want you to maybe think about the fact that he probably dragged you into worse situations than you would have been in if he’d just left you alone, or if you’d come with us to the Pole months ago.”

You think about the charade Pitch put up for half the year. About how he couldn’t control the fearlings as much as you’d hoped. About the entire last few hours in his lair and being held in a cage and terrorized by a nightmare creature putting on his face and threatening you. About Alisah being kidnapped.

You reach up and touch your eye underneath the scarf, and then the still odd-feeling mark on your neck.

“Maybe that’s true, Jack,” you say, trying to keep your voice even. “But maybe I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”

“And I’m sorry about that,” he replies. “I really wish that talk at your home had gone better. Or that we hadn’t jumped so far ahead of ourselves. We should have listened to you more.”

You sink down next to him again, nodding. You take another sip of your drink, choking it down as you run a quick pros and cons list in your head. You decide against telling him about your involvement in the Zhuokou Incident just yet, and against telling him the whole story about your year knowing Pitch. Despite technically being a prisoner for the moment, staying at the workshop was slowly becoming fun, and it’s a surprising relief to be around a lot of other people. And yetis. You’d nearly flipped your shit when one knocked on your door to change your sheets and move a few more of the items in storage to another room. The best part was that his name was, of all things, Phil. A cryptid named Phil. Sure.

You aren’t ready to potentially lose this because of your past. That thought makes you ache for Pitch even more; he understands mistakes.

You chat lightly with Jack until you just can’t stand the cold anymore. Back inside, he leads you around the workshop on a quick, very informal tour where he shouts out vague, probably inaccurate information about each section, agitating the yetis until he has a whole mob of them chasing after you. North is less than pleased when the yetis catch you and drag you to him. Jack just shrugs, and you stifle laughter. North notices you trying not to laugh, and he just sighs and rolls his eyes, much to the chagrin of the yeti. Jack zips off to go spread winter in different parts of the world, whipping up a soft snowfall on his way out. North shakes his head and motions to you.

“Join me for moment,” he says.

He slowly leads you down the hallways and corridors, giving you the tour of the workshop that Jack had bungled. There are fewer yetis working on Christmas preparations, which you find surprising. But North explains that this is the off-season, and although there’s never a time when the Pole goes completely dark, production won’t really ramp up until May or June.

“Six months doesn’t seem like a lot of time to prepare gifts for all the world’s children,” you say.

“Is enough.” He shrugs. “And ‘enough’ is all that matters sometimes.”

North takes you down a few more twists and turns until he suddenly stops and turns to face you, blocking the way forward. You back up a few steps, wary.

“Close your eyes,” he says, eyes twinkling.

You try to peek around him, but he moves to block you. On the one hand, you could refuse. He’d probably just go ahead and move forward anyway. On the other hand, you realize you’re distrusting _Santa Clause._ You take a deep breath and nod, closing both eyes. You feel him walk up beside you.

“I am going to put hand on shoulder and lead you forward. Okay?”

You nod. His hand rests on your shoulder and gives a small push. You step forward, letting him guide you. He doesn’t shove or clamp his hand over you, just gently nudges you onward until you feel the hallway open into a room. He steps to the side of you.

“Surprise!”

You open your eyes only for them to immediately well up with tears as you see the dingy, humble setup of your lab. It’s less chaotic than you usually keep it, and everything looks like it’s been polished and cleaned recently, including every single sample bottle. But it’s perfect. As you gasp, you take in a familiar scent of sappy pines, brine, and a hint of hard water.

You walk forward a few paces, running your fingers over the myriad of glass bottles, the old table, the outdated machines. You turn on one of your centrifuges and it makes the same, strained whining sound you remember. You’re fighting a trembling lip as you turn around to face North.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

He smiles warmly and holds his arms out for a hug. You reach over and clasp his hand instead. He looks a little disappointed—he and Toothiana seem to be huggers—but he squeezes your hand in reply. You start fiddling with the machine, afraid to actually open one and see the months-long results of forgotten, interrupted cycles.

“Home away from home for now. I was very impressed when I saw it for first time. Reminded me of my own experiments long ago,” North says, sitting backwards in your chair. “Very small, but room to grow. What were you studying?”

Explanation upon explanation, tangent after tangent, hypothesis by hypothesis, you ramble about your work over the course of the last seventy-five years. He sits there, leaning forward as you breathlessly explain how you started uncovering magic. First your own, of course. The first time you produced your magic, you freaked out and thought your hand was chemically burning somehow. But then you were able to produce it on command. It’s physicality was at the edge of tangible and intangible, able to be held and felt, but had so much feeling attached to it rather than being completely inert. You started out making simple paper and pen observations, trying to figure out if it was actually magic or merely a new part of your body, like some sort of secretion.

“The answer to that is ‘yes,’” North chuckles. He leans his face onto his fist, listening intently.

It hadn’t been long after that you started coming across magical substances. The moon resin, the golden sand, stray feathers. At first, you almost missed the substances as what they were, thinking you were just picking up random, neat items as you were out and about hiking. After awhile, you started to notice that there was a certain draw to these specific, seemingly unrelated things. By then, it had been a few years and you'd become itchy and bored. You felt the need to keep going with your work any way you could. Hiking and reading were fine enough pastimes, but dammit you had gotten your PhD for a reason. You sigh when you tell him that, quieting down and remembering how you’d used that PhD. North frowns, but he waits for you to continue. When you lean against the table silently, he slightly changes the subject.

“So you have been studying magic through science?”

“It’s all I know. But it’s been very difficult to get very far. I’ve been trying to uncover the base elements of magic, break it down to its components if it has any. But most of what I’ve been able to succeed at making is different mixtures of the substances I’ve found. Useful against fearlings, at least.”

“Tooth says your power is creativity.”

“If I touch a human with my raw magic, they get inspired. Combine it with… moon resin, let’s say, and you get people telling tall tales about things that may or may not have happened in their childhoods. Combine it with dreamsand, and you get a very malleable dream sequence.” You shrug. “If that’s creativity, then all I can really do is be the catalyst and amplify what’s already there. But the other magic is already powerful enough in battle, so why bother with extra steps?”

“‘Why bother?!’” His shout makes you jump and almost knock over the machines on the table. He rises and puts his hands on his hips. “‘Why bother…’ Garbage thought! All powers are useful once you know what you're looking at!”

He holds his hands out and concentrates for a second. You feel the power coalesce and slowly move around the room. It’s invisible, but as it passes over you, you feel a wanderlust come over you, and the fact that you can’t immediately go out for a midnight hike in your woods makes you so frustrated. You look at him, and he winks.

“Wonder,” he says. “Invisible, but potent. It lays foundations for dreams and spurs on questions. Makes kids into astronauts or dragon tamers. Now you.”

He points insistently at your hands. You summon your magic. By now the wonder has spread throughout the entire room, and your iridescence lights it up like fire on hydrogen. You freeze up and start to panic at the unexpected display, but North shouts, “Concentrate!” You take a deep breath in through your nose until your lungs are completely full, hold it, and slowly breathe out through your mouth. Just like you were taught to do ages ago. The iridescence stops expanding through the room as rapidly, starting to curl methodically and overlapping itself into knots. You feel something move toward your power.

“Now, does it pull or push?”

“The… I think the wonder is pulling towards my power.”

“Good. Concentrate. Find perfect spot to work into it.”

You slowly feel through the air of lazy swirls until you feel a catch beneath your fingers, just like in Pitch’s lair and your dream. As soon as you latch onto it, the power becomes pliable. You reach out and it starts to mold under your fingertips. You were panicking and desperate the last time you did this, and a weird instinct had taken over. Trying to recreate the ease with which you walked on shadows here is proving more and more frustrating. You can’t find the exact right spot immediately, and what you do find proves a little more resistant. You’re not even sure what you’re trying mold—it’s all feelings of wanderlust and racing possibilities. Landing on the correct thing changes from moment to moment, and you can’t keep up.

“Easy… easy, you can do this!”

You can’t. You cry out in frustration and everything drops out of the air, fizzling away before it hits the ground. You stare at the floor, controlling your breathing and trying not to grit your teeth together. North applauds.

“Yes! Yes, that is great start!” He laughs and walks over to you. “Soon, you will do that no problem!”

“I don’t know what I was trying to do. Everything I concentrated on was wrong or didn’t work. I couldn’t find the right answer—”

“Magic does not have right answer.” You meet North’s eyes. “Magic _is._ When I was human, magic came easily because humans believed in abstract more easily. Nowadays, is not so easy for them to connect to traditional magic source.”

“Please don’t start rambling about technology and science being bad…” you mutter.

“I'm not hypocrite! Just that science—no matter how magical—is not magic. Like dog is not cat and cannot be cat no matter how many times it goes meow. They can coexist and work alongside each other, look like each other, but cannot be each other. Science has answers: good answers, good solutions. It has mysteries meant to be solved. But it is rigid. New findings replace old. Magic is more feeling and instinct than answer.”

“Pitch said something like that to me,” you reply. North presses his lips together in a hard line and starts heading for the door.

“Who knows,” he says, clapping a hand to your shoulder. You lean away from the touch and he apologizes. “Maybe you find connection between magic and science and change everything for us. I hope so.”

He leads you back to your room, just so you know the way back and forth. He leaves you to yourself, but not before telling you that you’re welcome to more magic lessons as long as you are a guest of the Pole. You silently bristle at being called a guest, but thank him again for your lab, and say you’re looking forward to it. As he’s shutting the door, something occurs to you.

“Hey, North?” He pokes his head back inside. “It’s nice to have a familiar place to escape to, but I really miss Kidra. Could you find them?”

“Big, hunched dog thing?” He puts his hands on his head like ears. You nod. “We will watch for them.”

“Thank you.”

You pick up a book the young woman—finally introduced to you as Mother Goose, Guardian of Storytelling—had brought for you to read from her vast library. It’s a light fiction read, something you’re not particularly into, but it keeps you occupied and distracted until night falls.

Once the shadows grow long, you remove the scarf over your damaged eye. Light floods in, a little painful until you turn down the lamps. You wait a moment as your sight adjusts, though it doesn’t become fully comfortable. You settle back down next to the window, going back to your book. Unfortunately, you finish the book in the next hour and when you go to trade in for the next one, you just can’t escape back into fiction. The haunting thoughts of all your failures weighs down on your mind, and you spend the rest of the night staring out at the snow, trying to listen for Selene. You can feel her up there, staring down at you and waiting, but you’re not sure for what.

“I’m sorry,” you tell her. “I’ve lost everything.”

_“Only yourself.”_

It’s the same thing she’s said for the last few nights, and you hate that you can’t determine what it means. So, like the previous nights, you resign to spending it curled up against the window in your room, wrapped underneath the comforter, anxious and confused and alone. But not too much later, you start imagining another magic lesson, Koz as your teacher. You dive headfirst into the scenario, smiling as you can feel his arms around yours, shaping them just so, him whispering instructions into your ear.

_“Hm…”_

You flush as you avert your gaze from Selene’s eye, deliberately refusing to look out the window again until sunrise. You hope he’s all right, wherever he is.


	25. Plans Already In Motion

Pitch focuses on the most shadowed corner of the cage. The Sandman is out for the moment, but he could be back any second. Pitch breathes deeply and concentrates, trying to control the shallow, almost extinguished shadow. This would be tricky at his peak; surrounded by all this golden magic, he doesn’t expect an easy time of it. He spends close to half an hour trying to draw the shadow to him, or at least to stain the gold around it. Neither goal succeeds before suddenly there’s a huffing spot of gold in his peripheral vision.

“Sanderson!” Pitch says, turning around, clasping his chained hands together.

Even if he felt up to pretending he hasn’t been trying to escape, he’s sure the light sweat he’s worked up from the effort would be suspicious enough. The squat golden spirit stands there, crossing his arms and silently looking up at Pitch with an eyebrow raised. Pitch shrugs, and sits down close to the bars.

“I have to at least try, you know.” He smiles briefly, then shifts where he sits. “Can I please see—”

“No.” That’s the tenth time he’s asked, and the tenth rejection. One per day.

“Then can I trouble you for a dream?” Pitch asks. The Sandman cocks his head, eyebrow raising even higher. “Preferably one you won’t interrupt this time, as I have certain designs in mind.”

A faint blush covers the Sandman’s cheeks, and he sighs, looking the least bit guilty.

“I feel like it’s the absolute least you could do, seeing as how you not only destroyed my last one, but you also destroyed my life ages ago.”

The Sandman snaps his head back up and glowers at Pitch. Pitch swears he can see steam coming from the small spirit’s ears, and he manages to settle a smile creeping across his face into a smirk. But the Sandman is nothing if not soft. He rolls his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck, and summons a bit of dreamsand.

“Much oblig—” The Sandman flings the dreamsand at him, knocking him onto his back before knocking him out.

Like most dreams, this one starts in the dark. Pitch drags himself straight to lucidity and begins to focus, aiming to direct the dream where he wants it before it takes on a life of its own that he has to work around. He grabs into the shadows, trying to wrangle some to his side just for a familiar feeling. But none respond to his pull. He looks down at his hands and tries again. This time, blackness draws itself in spirals up his arms, and for a moment he’s relieved. After a second examination, he realizes it’s just a dream version of what shadows _should_ look like. Pitch’s stomach drops. He feels the dream shifting and drawing him onward, however, its own narrative starting to take shape. He ignores the shadows for now, quickly reasserting his visions over this dream.

He reaches into the dream and catches an arm. He pulls gently, dragging his spirit from the ether. They smile when they see him, and he’s so relieved he almost loses himself to the dreamstate. He wraps his arm around them, curling one around their hips and combing one into their hair. He buries his face in their neck and breathes in their scent. The dream provides it: earthy leather and sterile lab. They wrap their arms around him in reply.

“I love you, Kozmotis,” the dream doppelganger whispers into his ear. He whimpers against their neck and tightens his grip.

 _The dream is just responding to the dreamer,_ he reminds himself. _Darkest fears and deepest desires…_

That doesn’t make the words any less wonderful to hear.

He lightly drags his lips up their neck to their ear, kissing their jaw and dragging his teeth over their earlobe, ignoring that the dream is a bit behind on the feeling of solid flesh as he goes on. For now, this is good enough, convincing enough, has to be enough until he can get out of captivity and return to them. The dream responds with a moan from them. They press closer to him, threading their own fingers into his hair. He pulls back, looking at them, starting to pant. They gaze back through half-lidded eyes, their lips parting. He can’t help himself any more.

He furiously presses his lips to theirs, pushing his tongue into their mouth. They whimper and open to him, stepping back as they try to counter his push. Pitch reaches under their tunic, resting his hand on the skin of their back, pressing them even closer to himself. He runs a finger up their spine, and his spirit arches against him, gasping. They’re thrown off-balance, and Pitch holds out his other arm to cushion as they both tip against a wall that springs into being. He pulls back, leaning over his spirit with one arm, gently and lightly and so slowly drawing circles on their lower back with his other.

“Koz…” they say breathlessly. “Please…”

“Please what, my love?” he whispers against their ear. They twitch against him at the sound. He groans. “Please, please tell me. Anything you desire.”

Slowly, they run their fingers over his chest, reaching under his robe, which falls open under their caress. Their arms encircle him until his bare torso is flush with theirs. It seems the dream is a few steps ahead of him, and has done away with some of their clothing. He doesn’t care, is too caught up in the moment, so caught up that he doesn’t notice when he slips fully into a dreamstate.

“You,” his spirit says, baring their neck. “I only desire you, Kozmotis.”

He dips his head down and kisses their neck, laving his tongue over it and sucking. The mark springs up immediately, right as he finally bites down. Their moan encompasses his name fully, a trembling cry of lust that causes his hips to jerk forward against them.

“You have me,” he says to them, starting a slow rhythmic grind against them. “You’ve had me since I first saw you. You caught me in the darkness and never let go.” Pitch pants desperately. “Don’t let me go…”

They’re falling together, falling onto something soft. Like a bed, but neither of them care to check exactly. He’s on his back, and the spirit leans down and nuzzles him. He leans up to them and meets their lips with his. They curl over him, smiling and running their hands over his face, through his hair, down his chest and finally, finally they slide down and palm him through his pants. They’re so gentle, attentive, beautiful. They squeeze and he moans their name. His spirit leans down and attacks his neck, raking their teeth over his throat. Only teasing, not committing to a proper bite.

“I love you,” Pitch keens, arching up against them, trying to get as much friction as possible.

They slip their hand below his waistband and finally grab him, squeezing and stroking at the same time they bite down on his neck. For a brief second, Pitch becomes lucid enough to recognize that the dream is supplying most of the sensation, heightened emotion, and pleasure. But he then falls so deeply into the illusion that he feels his release wash over him, his spirit still above him, smiling serenely at him.

He rolls them over and caresses their face. Their breathing picks up as he resumes rocking against them, running his hand over every inch of their warm skin that he can reach. They moan and match his pace, desperate. He reaches down to their clit and lightly starts moving the tips of his fingers in small circles. They squirm under him, closing their eyes and grasping his elbow. He pauses for a few seconds, kissing them, and then resumes at a slightly faster pace, a slightly firmer touch.

Over and over again, he works them up, pausing for them to catch up to the feeling, until they’re in his lap, back against him, clutching the sheets. All the while, he kisses and bites up and down their neck and over their shoulder. Hearing them moan and whine from his work makes him jerk his hips forward again. He makes one final pass over them, and they spasm in his grasp.

“Kozmotis!” they cry out. Then they settle against him. “Kozmotis…”

They lay down on him, head on his chest, closing their eyes as he combs his fingers through their hair. He could stay like this forever. Him, his spirit. No shadows or Guardians to distract them, only each other and an eternity to spend together.

“Kozmotis!” a newly familiar voice calls.

There’s a set of laughter somewhere in the dreamscape. Pitch sits up, searching, though he knows exactly who it belongs to. At least, he now knows who it belongs to. He holds his spirit as he feels the memory images of his former wife and child move past where he sits. They’re talking, laughing, calling his name. The dream makes his heart leap and yearn to be with them. His spirit shifts on his chest, and he holds their face where he can see it and focus on them and them alone. He’s spent thousands of years needling people with the ghosts of their pasts, and he’s not about to fall victim to the same tricks.

They’re dead. They’re gone. There’s no returning to that old life.

The image of his spirit looks up at him, eyes emptying. It loses its veneer of humanity, becoming like a mannequin draped over him, smile painted on, smell stale and weak. He’s waking up. He tries to cling onto the dream, but it fades between his fingers, and soon enough his eyes open to the golden prison he’s still trapped in. He sighs and curses.

“Language.”

Pitch sits up and sees the rabbit sitting on a chair, glaring right at him. He looks frazzled: fur sticking up in weird places, patches of paint and dye all over him, a few leaves caught in odd places, ears twitching all over the place, leg bouncing. He is the image of a stressed creature who would rather be working to his deadline than sitting here.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Pooka?” Pitch says, pushing his luck right out of the gate.

The rabbit stands, kicking backwards and making the chair fly against the opposite wall with a crunch. He walks over to the bars and looks down his short muzzle at Pitch. It’s at this point that Pitch realizes that the Sandman is nowhere to be seen. Only a slightly worrying sign. The rabbit speaks in a low growl.

“I have less than eight weeks to finish Easter preparations. That by itself is enough to start drivin’ me crazy.”

Pitch watches him warily. His paws are twitching, one grabbing at the empty air, and the other already has a boomerang in it. He admires the restraint the rabbit is showing, as normally, he’s the Guardian who chooses to attack first, ask questions never. Most unorthodox for a Pooka, but Pitch supposes all of them had to change once they were stuck on this planet. The rabbit takes a breath and continues.

“Lucky it’s a late Easter this year, otherwise, you’d already be as dead as I can make you.”

He leans down and picks up a large sack. There’s an odd, quiet sound emanating from it, and the contents squirm inside like a pile of maggots. Pitch squints at it until he recognizes the sound: shadows. Small remnants of shadows. He suppresses a laugh. So the rabbit had noticed his efforts after all. Pitch leans forward.

“You gathered up a bunch of shadows and came straight here? Odd hobby, but I’m not one to judge an interest in the darkness.”

“You’ve got to be bloody stupid if you think I wouldn’t’ve learned how to look out for your tricks after last time.” He swings the bag against the bars, causing a dull but strong thump to sound out. “I’ve been collectin’ this for the last two months.”

Two months? Pitch eyes the bag again. There has to be more than mere remnants in here, then. Anything less than a dense brick of a shadow would have dissipated after doing its job. He opens his mouth to speak, but the rabbit snaps his ears one direction and faces the entrance as the Sandman finally appears. And oh, is that one of the angriest faces Pitch has ever seen him make. The Sandman glances from Pitch to the rabbit to the tossed chair to the squirming sack. He steps in, rights the chair with some sand, and firmly places two steaming teacups on it. Then he walks over to the rabbit, places his hands on his hips, and glares.

“This is important, Sandy,” the rabbit says. He points at Pitch with his boomerang. “He has to answer for this.”

The Sandman sighs and produces an image of the moon.

“I don’t care what Manny says, this is _Pitch_ we’re talkin’ about. Our enemy. The one who’s been terrorizing this planet’s children for centuries, and plenty of other planets before that!”

Pitch pulls a proud face, even if he’s completely uninterested in gloating at the moment. If anything, he wants the rabbit to get to his point. As does the Sandman apparently, because the golden spirit crosses his arms and taps his foot. The rabbit becomes more agitated, his ears flitting wildly, a visible tremble coursing through his body.

“He’s planning something, Sandy, something big. And we’re fools for lettin’ him survive this long!” The Sandman remains unmoved. The rabbit grits his teeth. “Sandy, _this_ is just the tip of the iceberg on whatever he’s cookin’ up!”

Before the Sandman can move fast enough, the sack rips open and its contents dump onto the floor. Shadows and black sand squirm and squeal as the pile spreads out at the edge of the cage. Pitch immediately jumps to it, shoving his hands into the shadows to grab at something to help him escape. The rabbit yells something above him, the Sandman whispers hoarsely, and there’s a chiming clinking sound starting up behind Pitch.

He pays it all no mind in favor of finally being able to reach out to that familiar darkness.

He concentrates, heart pumping, the thought of breaking out of here and going to find his spirit spurring him onward. The small, weak shadows start to crawl up his arms. He smiles, and reaches out to them, trying to feed them and start that loop of empowering and being empowered. The shadows shiver for a second, but continue their lazy race up to his elbows. His smile flickers. He pulls his hands back for a second and then shoves them back into the mass of shadows, reaching with his mind and soul. Nothing reaches back.

“Come on,” he whispers, a bead of sweat rolling down his face. “Please.”

This should be more than a sufficient amount of shadows to fight against the golden world around him, to resist fading into it before he has the chance to recapture it. But as he concentrates and tries to reach out to the shadows again, he feels nothing. The shadows wriggle over his palms and arms, aimlessly bumping into each other, melding and splitting again. The wounds on his chest tingle, and Pitch suddenly realizes what exactly bled out from him that day. He freezes, and only then do the shadows gain some sort of direction as they collectively squirm towards the nearest source of fear.

There’s a laugh directly above him. Pitch slowly raises his head before a paw grabs his collar and lifts him face to face with the rabbit.

“Well, well, well… How about that?” He raises a boomerang above Pitch’s head, a manic glint in his eye and a grin on his face. “Nightmare King no more. But let’s make sure of it, just in case.”

He swings the weapon down toward Pitch, who refuses to look away. Suddenly, a gold chain wraps around the rabbit’s arm. He chokes out a cry, but gets dragged backwards. At the same time, another golden chain flies from behind Pitch, attaches itself to his manacles, and drags him away. Once both of them are tied to opposite walls, the Sandman steps to the pile of shadows and pokes it with his finger. The shadows squirm wildly, and ultimately give to the gold.

“Enough!” His voice goes above a whisper for once, though he’s clearly straining to do so. He whips his head from the rabbit to Pitch. “I don’t like this situation, either, but this is where we are.”

“Even though he deserves it?” the rabbit yells, trying to use his boomerang to pry the chain from his wrist. “You remember what he did to me! To the Pookas!”

The Pookas. One of the strongest races present in the Golden Age and before. Intelligent, stoic, and full of themselves. The were the proclaimed guardians of the timelines, making sure no harm or change came to them, creating vast arrays of mechanical wonders to do their bidding. Pitch had fought a battle with them, coming to blows with the rabbit in front of him for the first time in said battle. As far as he could tell, after the dust of the battle that nearly felled him cleared, they had all disappeared. Space was wonderfully huge, however, so he doubted such a race could be undone so easily. Pitch was surprised the Easter Bunny cared so much; given his loud attitude and affinity for the organic, he already made for a poor excuse of a Pooka.

The Sandman looks at him. “I trust Manny’s guidance on the issue.” He sends a tendril of golden sand to pluck the weapon out of his hand and tuck it back into its holster. Only then does he release the chain from around the rabbit’s arm. “And Manny has as much right to hate Pitch as you do, for very similar reasons. If you care to recall.”

The rabbit yanks his arm back to him as soon as it’s free.

“Fine,” he says. He brandishes the torn sack out. “What about the shadows, though? I don’t have time to go chasin’ them down every tunnel when they appear, I’ve got a holiday to organize! ‘Course that isn’t even addressin’ the fact that this is too many shadows to not be worried about. Remember last time this guy got cocky? Whole globe just went dark. Do you want that to happen again?”

Pitch watches for a moment, amused at how quickly the rabbit shuts up as soon as he says that. Of all the Guardians, none takes his job more seriously than the good old Sandman. He seems a frivolous, quiet spirit, but he has the strength of a whole planet’s worth of children’s belief at his disposal. Some parts of the world do not celebrate or acknowledge Easter and Christmas. Oftentimes, teeth get lost or destroyed before the fairies can retrieve them. Illiteracy still runs rampant in places, and oral traditions die every day. Half the world is inaccessible to icy winters. But everyone dreams. The rabbit tries to backtrack, but the Sandman isn’t having it, and despite being attached to the wall, Pitch enjoys watching on.

His mind turns, however, to that very legitimate question the rabbit asked. The mistakes of half a century ago are very much on the verge of reoccurring, but with years of improvements and better tactics woven through it. He realizes, moreover, that either the fairy hasn’t noticed the similar efforts around her base, or she’s not particularly worried since belief in her doesn’t hinge on one big performance day. Given how he had directed the fearlings and Nightmare Men, though, it’s unlikely she’d be too worried about any shadows. The fairy isn’t quite as paranoid or vengeful as her colleague to notice an uptick in fear so long as it doesn’t affect the memories she collects. She's also quite scatterbrained.

A part of him wants to watch them fail, to see the Guardians suffer as he has. However, a loss for them means that not only will he be denied any revenge against the shadows that abandoned him, but it means the future of him and his spirit would be impossible. Pitch glares at the two Guardians. They’re the ones most like himself, yet they have been allowed down far different paths.

“Sandy, I just don’t think I could go through that again,” the rabbit says. “If you’re adamant about keepin’ him alive, then tell me how we’re going to counter whatever he’s throwin’ at us next.”

Pitch loudly clears his throat, and the rabbit glares daggers at him. Pitch smirks.

“If only you had someone in your midst who knew the fearlings’ tactics and future plans on a very intimate level.”

Blessed silence. The Sandman looks taken aback by the implication, and the rabbit is just incredulous. Pitch feels a pang of loss when he realizes he cannot read their emotional states anymore. A significant portion of his successes relied on being able to sense and temper the fear flowing through others, to instantly know the deepest secrets another person would beg to never have revealed. Pitch shrugs.

“I may have an interest in seeing the shadows fail, now. But I, being such a heartless person, could also stand to see you finally get yours.”

“Whaddya want?” the rabbit says, starting for the cage.

“You know what I want.”

“You can’t have ‘em.”

"They're the only thing I have left.”

The Sandman moves between them again, despite Pitch still being chained to the back wall behind the bars. He clears his throat.

“I think we can allow you to see them in exchange for helping us.” Pitch smiles.

“I think that’s wonderful,” he says. The Sandman gives a small sigh of relief. “But I’ve made too many dark bargains to let that be the end of the negotiations.”

“What else could you possibly need beyond that?” the rabbit says.

“Well, I’d much rather _be with_ them and be able to _interact_ with them and _be alone_ with them instead of just merely seeing them once and then being shunted away to tell you all of my secrets while you move them to another of your bases.”

The Sandman glances up at the rabbit and shrugs, whispering, “I tried.”

The rabbit sighs, crossing his arms. His ears twitch in a slow rhythm, not so much searching out sounds as they are him trying to think. Pitch doesn’t break his gaze away from them. He knows that as soon as the Pooka went quiet, he’d won. The rabbit tosses the sack on the ground and kicks over the chair again, spilling the tea the Sandman had worked to protect. The Sandman just watches him leave.

“I’ll call the others, and we’ll talk terms,” he mutters.


	26. Wills and Won'ts

Pitch is amused to see all of the Guardians squished into the small room outside of the cage. The Sandman conjures up a table and sets it with a teacup for everyone, and then he shoves one into Pitch’s hands as well. Ever the polite one, Sandman. He takes a sip and is immediately angry that it’s the perfect temperature, perfect length of steeping, perfect adornment of the simple drink. The Sandman looks up at him expectantly.

“It’s fine,” Pitch says.

The golden spirit smirks and rolls his eyes before hopping up to the large table where literally every other member is staring silently at Pitch. There’s only one missing.

“Where’s the little goose girl?” he asks.

“Her name is Katherine, and she’s taking care of the spirit,” Frost replies.

“They’re not a lost child. They don’t need a babysitter.”

“Stop it,” the Cossack thief says. “We are here to negotiate. Let’s be nice for once.”

Pitch and Frost sigh and busy themselves with their drinks, though Frost’s grip on his staff grows tighter. The rabbit sulks in his chair, bouncing his leg again. The fairy keeps fluttering her wings, lifting herself from her seat before plopping down again. The Sandman and thief look around, and then the latter stands and claps his hands together.

“I suppose we are as ready as ever. Let us begin,” he says.

“I am willing to help you make a counter-strategy against the encroachment of the fearlings and the Nightmare Men—counter-strategies to my own, well-laid plans, mind you—in exchange for unlimited access to my lovely spirit.”

The rabbit, fairy, and Frost cringe as he says that. He expected nothing less. The Cossack also looks less than enthused, and the Sandman rubs the bridge of his nose.

“Am I wrong? Are they not lovely?”

There’s a smattering of glances between them all, but the thief replies, “Yes, they are very nice. But we absolutely cannot allow unlimited access. We cannot allow anything less than chaperoned visits.”

He expected this, but one must always start bidding high. “I don’t see why we cannot be together without one of you looking on. What exactly do you think I’m going to do to them? Especially now that I’m…” He flexes the fingers of one hand. “Now that I have no powers?”

“We’re not sure what exactly you were doing to them to begin with,” the fairy chimes in, hovering for a moment. “You attack them, terrify them, and then they disappear only to be found months later in your lair? Injured, exhausted, and surrounded by powerful monsters that came about because of their power running through them?” She barely manages to restrain herself from a full yell. “What are we supposed to think?”

Those words are blades right through his soul. A truth he hasn’t really allowed himself to contemplate just yet. It’s easy to forget that he invaded their dreams and overwhelmed them in the open. So easy when he has months of memories of them sitting peacefully beside him in the dark forest, so thoroughly entranced in explaining a new line of hypotheses and formulae they’re developing. Months of walking side by side through the trees and bantering back and forth. A few months of holding them in his arms, happy that they reciprocate his feelings. Another month or so of knowing that even though they found out his deception, they came back to him when he was prepared to say goodbye forever. He swirls his tea for a long moment.

“Perhaps… I did not get off to the most honest start with them… But I truly wish I had.” He looks over to the Sandman. “I do wonder how I might have handled this if I had known I was capable of loving and being loved in the first place. Millennia of isolation and being ostracized can work a number on oneself.

“They did not first meet me as ‘Pitch Black, the Boogeyman’ but as an old, forest spirit named ‘Kozmotis.’ Which is a name I thought I had conjured from thin air at the time.”

“You lied to them about your identity?” Frost looks at him, mouth hanging open. “Why? For how long?”

“From about spring of last year to last Halloween. They discovered my ruse when you brought them along to my victory at Burgess.” He takes a sip as the Cossack holds Frost back from leaping at the cage. “As for why…” He thinks for a moment. “I admit, at first it was to play off of their naivete as a new spirit. Get into their head and eventually turn them to my side as an ally and turn them against you all. But it didn’t quite work out like that.

“At some point, I kept up the charade because, while I wanted to continue on my path and accomplish my long-held goals…” He smiles and gazes off into the distance. “I started having much more fun and became much happier when I was Kozmotis.

“It was nice to be around someone who had no preconceptions of me. Who didn’t look at me and immediately see me as an inherently evil blemish upon the world. I’ve spent so many years believing myself to be of one, immutable nature.” He glares at the Sandman. _“So many years_ of falling prey to the soothing, poisonous voices in my head because every time I tried to prove them wrong—” He flicks his gaze to Frost. The boy shifts uncomfortably. “—they were only ever proven right.”

“Cute monologue,” the rabbit pipes up. “But that’s not an excuse for all the crap you did do to them.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” Pitch replies, his insides running cold at the thought. “Though, I’m a little hurt that you, of all these people, cannot fathom the difficulty of breaking out of a strict mindset that you’ve been told over and over is the only proper one to have. Or were you conveniently born raging against the Pooka ways?”

The Sandman quickly summons another golden chain, holding it in front of the rabbit as a warning as he reaches for his weapon.

“It’s not the same thing,” the rabbit whispers.

“Perhaps it’s close enough.”

“We are getting off-topic,” the Cossack interjects. “Regardless of intentions, we stand firm on policy of chaperone. We have been tricked too many times by you to outright trust you like that.”

 _Time for some concessions, then,_ Pitch thinks. He tries to look thoughtful, even humble. He finally says. “All right. If that’s the best I’m going to get, then I at least want twelve hours with them per day. Half a day being with them, half a day or so at the planning table. That’s a grueling arrangement.”

“I was thinkin’ one hour with them, three to spill your secrets, and then the rest back here in the cage forever,” the rabbit replies. “We’re not entertaining you for more than a few days.”

Pitch raises an eyebrow, confused until he realizes. “Oh… oh you think you have some time until they attack. Either that, or you’ve completely overestimated yourselves. Again.” He laughs. “After that demonstration with the shadows earlier, I thought you’d understood exactly the extent of my efforts.”

The rabbit starts huffing so that his chest visibly rises and falls. The others look at Pitch with worried and quizzical expressions. He rolls his eyes.

“For reference, the assault on Burgess was built up over about three months. That’s one of the reasons the shadows still hold it. The fearlings, Nightmare Men and… other creature that now exists—they have had _more_ than thats to grow in strength and number. To spread more chaos and fear across the world and prepare their next move.”

There’s quiet for a moment as, one by one, horrified looks bloom on the Guardians’ faces. They glance at each other, minds surely racing to the apocalyptic scenario right away. Though, knowing them, Burgess was already the apocalyptic scenario. Anything worse than that is probably nigh-incomprehensible. Pitch leans a shoulder on the bars, turning the empty teacup in his hands, not looking at them all.

“Regardless of my lack of powers, I’m still the foremost expert on fear and the shadows. Not to mention I came up with the plans they seem to still be following. You need me more than you wish you did.”

*************

You’re holed away in your lab space when there’s a soft knock on the door. You check to see how much time you have left on the cycle, and walk over to answer it. Katherine stands there, fidgeting with her hair.

“Hi,” you say.

She locks her eyes onto the mark on your neck. “Can we speak?”

“Sure.” You lean against the threshold and cross your arms. She takes a deep breath.

“North told me you’ve been trying to explore your powers more, but from a more intellectual angle.”

You snort. “I guess that’s one way of putting it. It’s more like I’m trying to get to the bottom of what it’s made of. Like atoms and stuff.”

“Of course,” she pauses. “Would you like to visit my library to do a bit of research?”

Your heart nearly jumps out of your chest at the thought. Despite how tedious it could be, rummaging through your university library’s archives for research papers had been a pastime you liked. The dust and old paper, the darkened cloth covers, the monotonous drone of the copier as you printed straight from reference books, the feeling of being alone in the stacks as you cross-referenced studies. You didn’t have to do too much book research outside of your seminars and undergrad foundations courses, but being able to reference famous and obscure studies to your professors had always put you on a favorable track with them. A few had even been surprised you were joining a corporation instead of staying to pursue a research career. Maybe you should have.

You try to play it cool, but Katherine has a soft smile on her face. Something occurs to you though.

“I thought you had a fiction library, not one with research materials.”

“You’d be surprised how much fiction can benefit research.” She shrugs. “But, yes, my library is primarily filled with children’s books. I have a few things stored in my archives that might help you, though.”

A beeping starts behind you, and you rush over to pull the tests. You’ve started remaking the components for arrowheads, despite having no quiver, bow, or materials for arrow shafts anymore. The familiarity of it—the purpose it gives you—compels you onward. And even if the distillation process is unnecessary, it’s nice to go through the motions. After about ten or fifteen minutes, you’ve packed everything up and nod to Katherine. She holds up one of North’s teleportation globes, whispers, “Ganderly,” and tosses it down the hallway. Motioning for you to go on, you rush through the portal ahead of her.

Immediately, you’re surrounded by relative quiet and the sweet, musty smell of books resting on shelves. Katherine enters behind you, moving into your blind spot. Once you finally notice her, you jump a little and turn yourself where you can see her.

“Sorry,” she says. Then she steps forward, raising her arms out. “Here we are.”

Row upon row of brightly colored spines and cheerful fonts face you. They’re nestled into warm wood shelves, and it really does remind you of the public library’s children’s section. Katherine leads you through the rooms, naming all the different sections and describing which books are where. You’re not the biggest reader, let alone a connoisseur of kid lit, so you just take in the welcoming atmosphere. Passing a window, you take a moment to glance out of it, surprised to find yourself hundreds of feet in the air, dozens of branches clutching the architecture. Her gigantic goose, Kailash, flies by.

“A treehouse seemed only natural to me,” Katherine says, sliding next to you.

“Blows mine right out of the water,” you reply. “This is definitely the work of master craftsmen.”

“And a lot of magic.”

She leads you right to the heart of the library, where only a few, full bookshelves line the walls. The tomes on these shelves are heavier, dustier, far more ancient than the fare just outside. You slowly walk in to the cozy space, suddenly feeling like an intruder to a private area. Katherine walks from shelf to shelf, instantly picking up certain books without needing to look at their titles. She motions for you to sit in a chair, and she stacks the books beside you. She holds out the first one to you, but you hesitate to take it.

“It’s so old. I feel like I should be wearing gloves to read it,” you say. She places it in your hands.

“Thank you for your care, but there’s more than enough magic protecting them. A little finger oil won’t ruin them, no matter how old they are. Besides, these are copies of originals, and I can always make another if I absolutely have to.”

You finally take it. It's titled _A Brief Introduction to the Mystical World; or, How the Natural and Spiritual Energies Exist Independent and Intertwined with Each Other; and, A Meditation on the Nature of Life Itself._ It’s about the size of a Victor Hugo novel. It looks super dense and boring. It looks like it’s going to take a month to read once, and another month to parse through its exact meanings and definitions. You flip it open, and the print is tiny and squished into two columns per page. You smile.

“This should be, as it says, a good introduction to magic in general. But it might answer a few of your questions about… the components of magic.” Katherine looks a little puzzled and amused as she says that, as if such an idea is weird.

“It’s a start, I guess.” You shrug, then ask, “I don’t suppose I’d be able to take these back to the Pole with me, would I? To read there?”

Katherine scrunches her face up a bit, thinking. She places some paper and ink at your side. She glances to the bookshelves and then to the stack beside the chair.

“I’m a little particular about these,” she says. “The originals were almost stolen hundreds of years ago, and I’ve been afraid of them falling into the wrong hands ever since.”

You open to the cramped table of contents and avert your eyes from hers. “What do you mean ‘the wrong hands?’”

Katherine is silent. You chance to look up, and she’s back to staring at the dark mark on your shoulder. You raise a hand to cover it, and she snaps out of her reverie to look you in the eye.

“I’m sure you can guess who I mean.” There’s a moment of silence, and neither of you break your determined eye contact. Finally, Katherine says, “This is the same person who captured me multiple times as a child and threatened to do exactly what it seems almost happened to you. To Alisah.”

She points at the mark you’re covering up. You have never felt a more quickly soured atmosphere. The feeling under your hand gets too weird, and you let go. A tingle runs up your neck to your eye, and you blink quickly under the scarf. She wipes her eyes and fixes a stern gaze on you. You stammer for awhile, though you can’t find yourself to be too surprised. You knew this already, that the Boogeyman found his power through children’s fear. Hearing this from someone who had lived through it, though… Your stomach clenches, and when she mentions Alisah, you get nauseous. It all suddenly becomes so visceral and real. Katherine sighs again.

“I’m less angry that he’s seemingly suddenly changed than I am about the idea that he was always capable of change. If he has truly turned over a new leaf, great. Fewer children will suffer as a result. As a Guardian, I’m all for that. But…” She hauls herself up from where she’s been standing and walks over to you, gently reaching out. You pull away for a moment, but allow her to place her hand on your arm. “But selfishly, I really hate the idea that not hurting children in the first place never crossed his mind. And I’d appreciate if you could keep that in mind while you’re here.”

You nod, burying your nose in the dense tome and grabbing a pen to take notes with. A few hours pass in absolute silence. You occasionally look up to see Katherine engrossed in her own reading. She glances through a title-less book, the pages turning on their own. She whispers and hums occasionally, but keeps moving on despite everything. You settle into the book in your hands.

The introduction takes immense concentration to get through, but you understand the gist of what it says. Anyone can connect with magic on a basic level. It’s a force that flows throughout the universe, unbidden and uncontrolled until it reaches a conduit through which it can coalesce. You sigh, disappointed that it seems to be repeating what everyone else has told you so far, but you remind yourself there’s a whole book left. Though, you do wonder if you should study physics before moving on with your work; all this talk about “forces” and “flow” might resonate better with the nonsense physics demystifies.

“… Zhuokou Incident… three generations… irrevocably damaged…”

You snap your head up to Katherine. She’s still got her head buried in her own magic book, but she’s murmuring out loud. She starts to turn the pages, shaking her head.

“Um, Katherine?”

“Hm?” She blinks and turns her focus to you.

You pause before asking, “What do you know about that? The Zhuokou Incident?”

She gets a distant look on her face. “It was the worst blow to belief and peace since the wars of the early twenty-first century.” She glances you up and down. “I suppose you already know about it, right? You were still human at the time?”

“Y-yeah. It was all over the news, both the event and the inquiry afterward. But from your perspective—the Guardians’ perspective—it was that bad?”

“We’ve long speculated that it’s that event that led to Pitch regaining enough fear across the world that he was able to attempt his takeover fifty years ago. He was quiet for centuries, but then barely thirty years after that, he was back to terrorizing children’s dreams and able to corrupt Sandy’s dreamsand. Nearly killed Sandy for good, too, and almost left the rest of us too weak to function. It was horrible.” She cocks her head. “Are you okay?”

You suddenly feel a tear break from the corner of your eye and fall down your cheek. You’re shaking, and you set the book down before you rip a page. Katherine rushes over and places a hand on your arm. You shift away.

“I… might’ve known someone who was involved in making the… poison.”

Katherine gasps. “I’m so sorry. That must have been a horrible shock to learn they were capable of that.”

“In a way, it wasn’t,” you reply. “There were always signs before it happened.”

Katherine sighs in sympathy. “That’s always a worse realization.”

She ducks out of the door for a moment, speaks with someone, and then comes back in. Minutes later, a guard comes in with a pitcher of tea. You pour yourself a glass and dive back into the book. You both return to your studies.

“You can take it with you,” Katherine says suddenly. You glance up, confused. She points to the book in your hands. “Take it when you go back to the Pole and return it when you’re done with it.” She smiles. “I trust you to take care of it.”

You look at her, and you wonder how far exactly one has to fall before people notice something is off. Because you had thought you’d already hit rock bottom.


	27. Agreements

“So, we’re in agreement?” The Cossack looks around at the rest of the present Guardians and then to Pitch. He nods, and the Sandman creates a temporary window in the roof. The light of the moon, and the presence of the Man in the Moon, shines down. It begins.

“You will provide us information on the fearlings' and Nightmare Men’s plans and movements, as well as help us construct counter strategy. You will do this under strict supervision of Yetis, Baby Tooths, Raconturks, egg statues, and/or one of us Guardians. You will not have free movement around Pole; you will go where chaperone takes you. If chaperone perceives that you are about to cause harm to anyone at Pole—especially chaperone, Guardian, or spirit—they will subdue you, by force if necessary. You will wear specially made manacles and collar to ease ability to subdue you. Otherwise you will... not be chained to encourage good faith between us.”

Pitch locks his gaze with the Cossack, refusing to glance at the others despite how delicious their furious and frustrated expressions have been. He’s so close. The moonbeams wash over him, and he tries not to flinch automatically. Without his powers, they’re no longer a threat to him anyway, as he is no longer a threat to them. That was a surprise ace in the hole in the negotiations, as disappointing as the circumstances are. The Cossack looks at him, and Pitch picks up the conversation.

“In exchange for my cooperation, you will allow me to see, interact with, and be close to the spirit I desire. I understand that these visitations will occur under strict supervision of previously established chaperones. We are not to be alone together. At all.” He has to take a deep breath as he says it to control his frustration. He hears the rabbit _hmph._ “However, I shall be able to petition for loosened restrictions should I prove myself capable of being truthful and loyal to the cause at hand, if not necessarily to the Guardians as a whole. I will be granted eight hours per day to spend with the spirit with the rest either being spent planning the counter strategy, detailing the shadows’ plans and habits, or… here in this cell.”

The moonlight flares and swirls around the room. Pitch finally looks around at the others present. As he thought, their faces seem to be a mix of unease and disappointment. Possibly with a dash of pure hatred and distrust. The inability to sense the more fearful emotions of anything has him unsure of how to read the room accurately. He hasn’t realized until now just how much he relied on it to give him a leg up on cold reading people, to the point he’s not sure it counts as a cold reading if one can feel someone’s deepest fears and surface anxieties. He must rely on his honed intuition from now on, he supposes. And his intuition says that the Guardians would much rather see him rot than gain this sort of freedom. Pitch focuses back on the large man in front of him, who opens his mouth again.

“We will begin abiding by these terms tomorrow as sun rises, with you and spirit meeting for one hour.”

“I will meet my spirit tomorrow as the sun rises.” Pitch says this less as an affirmation of the terms and more in affirmation of his excitement. The Cossack thief keeps looking at him. He sighs and adds, “I will meet with the spirit at dawn for one hour.”

“We, the Guardians of Childhood, agree to these terms.”

“I, Pitch Black, formerly the Boogeyman and Nightmare King, agree to these terms.”

They reach their hands out to each other and shake. The thief squeezes his hand perhaps a little more than necessary. The grip prevents Pitch from trying the exact same thing. A moonbeam swirls around their grasp, signaling the Man in the Moon’s agreement on the matter. As soon as the moonbeams disappear, they drop each other’s hands.

“All right, then,” the Cossack says. “We will tell the spirit about this and prepare them to meet you.”

“You haven’t told them about this?” Pitch splutters, pressing himself against the bars. He looks around at all the Guardians, but they’re mostly focusing on leaving as soon as possible. He barks out a chuckle. “You haven’t told them anything, have you? Do they even know about my past life, as you’ve all been informed? Do they even know I’m powerless?” They don’t respond. “You keep this up and they won’t trust a word you say. You, who are often deemed the most trustworthy characters on this planet.”

They continue to ignore him. The first to leave is the rabbit, who taps his foot and disappears back to his eggs. The fairy flies off, a dozen smaller fairies in tow. The Cossack summons a portal and waves for Frost to follow. The boy is the only one who bears to take a glance at him. Pitch hopes that furrowed brow isn’t pity. He neither needs nor wants their pity at this point. They had their chance. Chances. Finally, just he and the Sandman are left. He glances at the small spirit.

“Well, Sanderson.” The Sandman looks up at him and sighs. “Here we go.”

*************

You’ve gotten about three-quarters of the way through the first, enormous chapter of the tome. It’s detailing magical substances and how to identify them, as well as speculation on the base of their formation. It’s a lot more dense than you anticipated, and yet doesn’t explain too much more than you’ve already learned in your mortal schooling. Katherine had said an ancient wizard wrote it a long time ago, so some of the information has been expanded upon since then, both by scientists and magicians. You might need to spend a week on this chapter alone, especially as you takes notes on it. Interestingly, you’ve realized that you find reading easier at night if you just use your damaged eye. One benefit to it, you suppose.

There’s a knock on your bedroom door. You stop and remind yourself that this is just a space you’ve been assigned while the Guardians keep you here, however long that turns out to be. Your real bedroom is back in the marshes on the southeastern coast. Well, you hope so. It’s not exactly made with extreme structural integrity. But it’s home.

You drag the scarf over your eye before opening the door to the bright hallway. North, Jack, and Katherine stand there, shuffling in place. All three of them here at the same time sets you on edge, and you stop yourself from just slamming the door against whatever news they have. Instead, you say, “Yes?”

“May we come in? We need to talk,” Katherine says.

You feel like you can’t say no. They follow you in and spread out. You stand nearest to the open door. North motions for you to sit, but you shake your head, waiting.

“There have been some developments,” he says. He takes a deep breath. “Guardians and Pitch have made agreement.”

You perk up at this news. Mostly, you’re relieved he’s still alive. Even if they’d told you that Manny had asked them to spare his life, you couldn’t be sure.

“What sort of agreement?” you ask.

“He’s gonna be helping us make plans against the shadows. To defeat them, hopefully,” Jack replies. Katherine huffs.

You raise an eyebrow. “He agreed to that?”

“Yes…” North pauses. “In exchange for being able to see you.”

You nearly stop breathing for a second as your heart seizes up in your chest. Then, it beats faster, and you smile.

“For real?” you ask, your voice catching. “I can see him?”

“There are restrictions to this agreement,” Katherine spits. “You two will not be alone together, and he’ll always be watched in case he needs to be reined in.”

Just as quickly as you feel yourself flying, you fall. Of course. There’s always a catch with them. You can already feel the frustration building.

“I’m not a baby. I can take care of myself.”

“But, _he_ is a villain,” she replies. You bite back a retort; knowing her past, you can’t bring yourself to yell at her for hating him. Still, you feel it’s too much and unfair.

“There is more,” North says. “Pitch… Kozmotis…” He clears his throat. “Pitch is not Pitch anymore.”

Before you can ask, Jack pipes up. “First of all, the shadows apparently took his powers away. Not sure how, but he can’t even make black mist anymore.” You’re horrified, but he continues, “Also, apparently he used to be a decent guy way back in the Golden Age.”

“He… What?”

“His name was Kozmotis Pitchiner,” North picks up. “He was greatest, bravest general Golden Age had seen, and he made it his mission to fight fearlings and shadows wherever they appeared.”

None of them look too surprised to hear this. “How long have you known this?” you ask, looking between them. “What else haven’t you been telling me?”

“We’ve known since he woke up about two weeks ago.” North rubs his forehead. “Sandy had known since Golden Age, but didn't tell anyone. He thought Pitch went bad on his own.”

“What happened, though?” They all shrug.

“Not even Sandy knows.”

You’re quiet, trying to think about what all this means. However, the idea of seeing him again has you tense, excited, needing to move or else you’ll explode with how much energy is rushing through you. You start to sway where you stand, thinking about how you’ll be able to hold him, see him, hear his voice. Feel his lips on yours, with any luck. You find yourself in front of a small mirror on the wall, trying to figure out when your appearance became absolutely feral.

“When?” you ask. “When will he be here?”

“Dawn.”

 _That’s not enough time!_ you think. That’s in so few hours that you have no idea how you’ll be ready to see him. You start pacing, pausing only when you hear your name.

“We don’t have to do this if you’re worried,” Katherine says quietly. North and Jack shake their heads.

“We kinda do. It’s the only way he’ll help us,” Jack replies. “We made an official agreement.”

“I’m not worried,” you say. You briefly touch your eye. What will he think of it? “I’m just excited. And I feel like I don’t have time to prepare.”

“Then we’ll leave you to it.” Katherine looks at you sadly and starts to leave. “But please come to us if you need to talk.”

The three of them, having delivered their message, head for the door. Katherine and Jack slip out into the workshop. North hovers by the door for a second, reaching into his pocket.

“It is true, we’re worried. None of us wanted to make this deal.” You decidedly refuse to look at him. It’s the same thing from them over and over. You understand why, but it’s gotten so tired. He continues, “But it is some relief to see you happy and excited for something. The best you have been so far is… merely content, I think.”

You spare him a glance. He’s holding something in his hands, looking at you. He holds out what looks to be a circle of soft leather with a lens set into it. You reach out and grab it, and you see it’s an eyepatch.

“I have been working on this. To help you with predicament.”

You carefully remove the scarf from your head, and slip the patch on. As it covers your eye, there’s a moment where nothing happens, and then the light slowly adjusts until you’re able to see properly and evenly from both eyes.

“Huh.”

“Does it work?”

You face him, able to see with proper depth perception for the first time in a fortnight. You wave your hand in the peripheral of your formerly blind side. You can sense it there, and you sigh in relief. No more sneaking up on you so easily. You nod.

“Thanks, North.”

“No problem. I have instinct for these things!”

He leaves and you’re back to pacing. You shake out your cloak and tunic, trying to smooth them out. You sniff them. That’s never been much of a problem since you died, but you’re keenly aware of everything around you now and how you might be perceived by others. You wonder if you should be completely decked out in what little you have. What is he expecting? He’s never expected much before. You keep touching the mark on your shoulder and the cheek under your eyepatch. The thoughts start to whirl around your head until it stops being excitement and legitimately becomes anxiety, and you freeze trying to make your decisions. 

The only thought that can make its way through is, _Soon._

*************

_Has this robe always been this threadbare?_ Pitch runs the fabric through his hands, feeling how thin and tattered it is. It feels ancient; it probably _is_ ancient. He used to have such nice robes, clothing fit for… _Fit for a general of the Golden Age…_

He starts pacing, trying not to pick at the old clothing. The shadows used to meld with the fabric and cover him that way. That’s how he made the collar to hide his scar—he reaches up to the mark they’d given him. He closes his eyes, imagining them leaning in and kissing his shoulder, moving to the crook of his neck—

_There’s no time for that line of thought, something has to be done about this._

He looks around for a mirror, but of course there isn’t one. This is a prison cell. Though it seems to have been set up in a spare room somewhere, rather than being an innate feature of the island. Naturally. Pitch has a hard time believing the Sandman of all beings would have constructed his base with a prison. Speaking of whom, a small, stout figure saunters just outside of the doorway.

“Sanderson!” he calls. He wraps his hands around the bars, straining to see if he’s still there. “Sanderson?”

The small spirit leans over the threshold, looking confused. Pitch waves him over. The Sandman walks close to the cage, but keeps his distance. Pitch opens and closes his mouth a few times, wondering how to ask.

“You can manipulate your sand into clothing, can’t you?” The Sandman looks very worried now. Pitch shakes his head. “I look a mess, and I’m about to see the one I love, and I just… _can’t_ be presented to them like this.”

He stands back, gesturing to himself. The Sandman lets out a small “Hm.”

“You and I are practically mirrors. I could conjure garments, and I believe you can as well?”

“Where are you going with this, Kozmotis?”

 _“It’s Pi—_ Nghh…” Pitch calms himself or a moment before he says something completely stupid. He takes a deep breath. The whole point of doing this is to put in effort to be peaceable. Just for now. “Sanderson… could I possibly, somehow, ask you to spare some sort of glamour or nice clothing so that I don’t meet them for the first time in weeks looking like _this?”_

The Sandman shakes in laughter, and Pitch leans his head against the bars, looking at the ground.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I’m sorry, Kozm—Pitch,” he says. “It’s just interesting seeing you like this. Normally you’re so uptight and gloomy.”

The Sandman turns on his heel and walks out of the room, and Pitch feels a little abandoned. He’s not sure if he’s being made fun of. There’s a good silent hour or two where Pitch almost gives up on the Sandman coming back, and then the golden spirit returns, a bundle of clothing and a slim mirror in his hands. He sets up the gilded, baroque mirror just beyond the bars, and holds out the clothing.

“My mermaid friends helped whip this up really quick, from one of my old starcatching uniforms. Unfortunately, they’re not familiar with Golden Age fashion design, and it’s been so long I don’t think I could be a good consultant on it anymore. But hopefully, these will do.”

Pitch holds out the garment in front of him, worried for a second it’s a prank and the old uniform will be laughably too small. But to his surprise, it seems enough magic went into it that it will very well fit him. It’s elegant, though it does have more of a costume look than a design that came naturally out of the long-ago era. Nevertheless, the sharp, asymmetrical lines and simple decoration make his memories twinge into nostalgia. He looks up in time to see the Sandman exit the room again. Pitch waits a moment and then changes. It’s not exactly tailored to fit, and some of the seams are visibly uneven, but the soft fabric doesn’t pucker or tug in unsightly ways. He’s overwhelmingly glad it’s a darker blue rather than gold or pastels. Black would have been preferable, of course, if only for its familiarity, but neither beggars nor prisoners can be choosers.

“Are you decent?” the Sandman calls softly after a few minutes.

Pitch finishes adjusting the low collar and billowy sleeves. “I used to be the Boogeyman. Being decent is the antithesis of my nature.” There’s silence, and he sighs. “Yes, Sanderson, I’m dressed.”

The Sandman re-enters the room, crossing his arms and nodding. “You look like you’re ready to lead the armies of the Golden Age again.”

“Is that why you’re being so nice to me? A nostalgia kick?”

"Maybe it's an apology for never reaching out."

Pitch pauses. "To be fair, I wasn't exactly approachable. Look what nearly happened to you half a century ago."

The Sandman shrugs. "Even if I hadn't made it back, you stood no chance against belief."

Pitch silently disagrees, but then remembers where he is right now. Everything he'd done... all for nothing.

The Sandman continues, a little sheepishly, "I’d always heard stories way back then of how you single-handedly subdued the fearlings and dream pirates when they attacked. The name ‘Lord High General Kozmotis Pitchiner’ was always whispered in reverence and hope where I lived and worked. I never got to meet you in person back then, unfortunately, but you were a symbol of persistence and good.”

Pitch snorts in derision. “That is a time so long ago, so buried in the shadows of my memory, that I may as well have been a different person.”

“And with this new turn, are you starting a third life?”

He pauses and looks at the Sandman strangely. The small spirit smiles innocently at him. He forces himself to stop fidgeting before he rips something, and ignores the question to ask his own. “Perhaps you never met Kozmotis, but did you happen to meet his family, by chance?”

The Sandman pauses, bites his lip, and then shrugs. Pitch narrows his eyes. He’s mostly sure the Sandman isn’t telling him something, but decides not to pursue the issue. He’s not preparing for ghosts; they’re gone, as is that life. There is only one thing, one person driving him forward anymore. He smooths out the robes one more time and then holds his arms out.

“Do you think they’ll like it?” he asks. Sanderson nods, smiling. “Then I await the dawn.”

*************

You can’t help but wonder—as you run your hand over the black mark and patch yet again—if your spouse had felt this way after the stroke. Like there’s going to be only one thing people see about you for the rest of time. Like you’ve been utterly and completely marked for worse. Like they’ll be creating a narrative of pity and condescension before they even speak to you.

Worse, you know that the answer is "Yes." You’ve been on the other side of this, and every time you glanced at your partner, you couldn’t help but witness one of your worst failures in life over and over. They were still gorgeous, and you still didn’t deserve them and their forgiveness, but it was hard to reconcile the visible consequences of your poor decisions from the ideas your therapist tried to burn into your mind about mistakes just being part of the human condition.

You turn away from the mirror and try to breathe deeply and calm your nerves. He actively bargained for time with you, fighting against the Guardians’ reluctance. You pace again, your quickly refreshened cloak billowing out around you. It was about the best you could do under the circumstances. Katherine lent you some clothes, but she dresses simply already, and there’s no time to commission something. You also have no idea if the yetis—multi-talented as they are—would be able to sew anything at all.

You glance at the book Katherine lent you, briefly thinking about distracting yourself with it. But you decide against it, knowing that you’ll either become utterly transfixed in the puzzle, or you’ll never be able to get past the surface of the text at all. Pacing hasn’t helped, either, so you just head back over to the window, open it, and breathe the fresh night air.

_“He will be within my sight soon.”_

You snap your attention to the hole in the dark sky where Selene is resting. Her voice is as aloof as ever, but there’s an edge of curiosity to it this time. You lean against the window frame.

“Yes. Not soon enough.”

She doesn’t respond, but you continue to stare at the darkness surrounding her, watching her eye rise and drift over the sky. You lose sight of her just as the sky starts to muddy from dark blue into greenish-red. For once, you’re not nearly as sad to see her disappear and watch the sun rise.

There’s a knock on your door. With a flourish, you jump up and cross the room in less than a second, flinging the door open before Katherine can draw her hand away from the door. Her eyes once again automatically attach themselves to your shoulder, and you’re glad your cloak covers most of the mark. She drags her gaze away from it and looks you dead in the eye.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks. “Because if you aren’t, I will take you to Ganderly right now and have my Raconturks guard you from both Pitch _and_ the Guardians. I don’t care about the truce they’ve made, I just want you to be safe. So please, tell me if this is what you really, truly want.”

There’s something touching about her concern, and you find yourself tearing up. Katherine’s eyes go wide, and she starts breathing angrily, assuming the worst. She turns, but you catch her arm and drag her back for a moment. You look at her for one second before wrapping your arms around her shoulders. You’re going to hate yourself when she learns the truth about your past and abandons you, but for now, you lose yourself to the genuine kindness she’s giving.

“Thank you,” you says. “I… I appreciate this more than you know. But—”

“We’ll have to sneak out. I more or less grew up exploring these halls. I—”

“No!” you cry. She focuses on you again, confused and frustrated. You lean back from the embrace. “I mean it when I say I want to see him. You’re just probably the third person who I’ve ever believed when they said they’re concerned about me. I don’t feel like I deserve that most of the time. But I do, _desperately_ want to see him and be near him again.”

She waits one more, long moment just in case, before squeezing your hand and nodding. “If you ever change your mind, just let me know,” she says before motioning you to follow her through the hallway.

She leads you to the meeting chamber in the loft overlooking the main hub of the workshop. A massive globe, shimmering with the lights of worldwide believers, sits as the centerpiece. Katherine holds her arm out as you approach, blocking you from going any farther. On your other side is North, and Jack and Sandy hover above the whole line. A slew of the Guardians’ forces surround the small area. The only ones missing are Bunny and Toothiana, off preparing for Easter.

A single sunbeam shines through the large window on the upper wall, and across the way, a portal opens.

The Guardians tense around you, ready for anything, but you watch as the familiar silhouette makes its way closer and closer. You once again bring your hand up to your face as the shape resolves into him, and you gasp. He’s wearing not his usual, simple black robes, but a gorgeous set that makes him look otherworldly and graceful. You tug at your old cloak. If you’d only had more time…

He raises his head, eyes darting around. They land on you, and he inhales sharply, stepping forward one pace and reaching one arm out before Sandy tugs him back by his other wrist.

You’re trembling. You’re tearing up.

Kozmotis is finally just within reach again.


	28. Reunion and Regret

Pitch blinks as the light from the portal fades, changing suddenly to the direct sunbeams of dawn. Just from the smell, temperature, and sounds in the distance, he knows he’s at the Pole. The last time he was here, it was to gloat before victory was assured. Remembering just a few weeks ago at Burgess, he realizes he hadn’t really learned anything from his defeat fifty years ago.

Once more, he smooths the robes down, trying to wrestle the most uneven seams into place without looking like a complete fool. The portal behind him closes completely, and he lets go of the clothing. There are too many people around him to hide. It's too bright out, anyway. He’s made his decision, and now he’s living with the awkward consequences. There’s a small, sharp inhale and he looks up, searching.

There they are, glowing in the golden rays of the sun like a beacon.

His breathing picks up and he can feel the first pinpricks of tears in the corners of his eyes. They’re alive. They’re safe. They’re here. In the next microsecond, however, he sees the dark, spiraling mark on their shoulder, rolling up to their face, stretching underneath an eyepatch wrapped around their head.

_Oh…_

He’d been hoping that was just a temporary mark, given that the Nightmare Man was unable to finish the corruption process and the spirit had yanked some of the shadows from under their skin. The keyword seems to be “some,” however.

He gasps and takes a step forward, trying to reach out to his spirit, to be closer to them. Sanderson wraps his hand around Pitch’s wrist and holds him back. He starts to panic for a second, ready to fight his way over to the spirit if these fools have been lying this whole time. But if that were the case, why present them, anyway? Why not just ambush him right out of the portal? Better yet, why remove him from his literal prison cell in the first place?

He takes a deep breath and stops, straightening back up and standing as still as his excitement will let him. The spirit starts to move past the outstretched arm of the little goose girl, but she reaches out and holds them by the shoulder for a moment. Then, glaring at Pitch the whole way, she slowly leads his spirit into the center of the circle of witnesses. Likewise, Sanderson finally nudges him forward. Pitch swallows his nervousness, throat scraping against the cold iron collar around his neck.

They stop barely a foot apart, their gazes having never left each other’s on the short walk. As they get closer, the spirit roves their eyes over him—both of them, he assumes, as he can see they’re wearing not a simple patch, but a dark lens over their eye. They rest their gaze on the collar and manacles, and then all over his body. They start to blush and snap back to his face.

He wishes he could feel their fear, just to make sure they aren’t scared of him.

They reach out their hand, closing more of the distance between them. Pitch catches their hand with his—they’re still so warm, thank goodness—and laces his fingers between theirs. They smile, eye glimmering with tears, and they reach out with their other hand to cup his face.

“Kozmotis,” they whisper, and he breaks.

He leans down until their foreheads are touching, never breaking eye contact, never wanting to go so long before seeing their brilliant gaze again. He holds his hand over the one on his face, turning just enough that he can press his lips to their palm and whisper their name in reply. They let go of his hand, and bring it up to the other side of his face. He wraps his now free hand under their cloak and around their waist, pulling his spirit against him fully. They’re barely two inches apart now, and it still seems too far.

They tilt his face down and lean up to him. Pitch has one last second to contemplate if the Guardians will allow him to do this before the spirit is kissing him deeply. He tightens his grip around their waist and squeezes their hand. The dream he’d conjured a few days ago was nothing compared to real touch, real contact where he can feel everything as it happens instead of with a delay. It feels like it’s been eons, yet they meld into him as effortlessly as ever. He thinks he hears grumbling from the sidelines, but the Guardians can go toss themselves off a bridge. He has this, and they will not take it away again.

They part for a moment, but only a moment, as Pitch leans forward to nuzzle into their neck, near the black mark on their skin, inhaling the mix of lab and leather he’s come to adore. The undertones of pine and cinnamon cannot overpower it, and he sinks into it like a soft, deep bed. He hears them sigh against him as they wrap their arms around his neck, kissing his temple. He heaves a sob and drags them against him. His fingertips dig into their waist, and he brings his other hand up their back and neck until he’s threaded his fingers into their hair. They inhale sharply at the contact and tense up.

“Koz,” they say.

“Yes, I’m here. I’m here…” he murmurs against their neck, just below their jawline. He hears rising shuffling and rumblings from the peanut gallery, but he shoves them out of his thoughts again as he presses one shy kiss to their jaw. Let them all watch; maybe they’ll learn something about themselves.

“Koz,” they sharply whisper his name again and shift in his arms.

“Yes, say it, name it. I will gather the stars one by one for you if you ask!”

“L—lo—” their breathing gets faster, and he begs the universe to let them confirm what he feels for them. The rustling around them gets more frantic, and he hears Frost barking out his name. They’re closing in the circle for some reason, and he grips tighter in fear of being dragged away from them so soon.

 _Please,_ he silently begs again. _Please!_

“Locket…” they choke out, just short of sobbing. Pitch freezes and lets up on his grip. He opens his eyes in surprise, though he’s mostly sure what he heard.

“What did you—”

“LocketlocketLOCKET!”

Immediately, Pitch releases them and backs up a step. He takes their expression in, and he sees that the spirit is on the verge of tears again, but not in joy. This can’t be joy, not with that faraway stare and heaving breaths and frozen, twitching posture.

_No. Oh, no…_

He goes to cover his mouth with his hand, holding his other out to try to comfort them, but chains snap between the manacles and shorten, bringing his wrists together. Another chain sprouts from the collar, and his wrists are brought just below his chin. Hands grab his arms and start dragging him away from the spirit.

“Wait,” he says, struggling. Their grip is unrelenting. “No, please wait!”

The little goose girl reaches out, clutches her hands to the spirit’s shoulders, and starts to drag them away. The spirit startles out of their stunned state and immediately yanks themself away from her, turning so that they can see her and the rest of the people at once. They turn their head frantically. He’s seen this reaction before, and his stomach turns to ice. He tries to pull out of their grasps again.

“I let go of them, just—just wait a moment!” he yells. “Please!”

*************

The wrong face—to elongated, too sinister, too many teeth. The wrong voice—all cackles and harsh growls that lure you in with sweet honey croons. The ever-tightening grip on your hair—ripping and knotting every strand, letting you know it could be doing so much worse if you weren’t such an entertaining toy.

For a moment, it’s like you never left that cage, and you can feel your face being yanked and slammed into metal bars, your legs slowly being enveloped by a wad of hungry darkness.

 _It wasn’t true,_ you remind yourself as your thoughts continue to spiral. _They were using his face to get at you. He chose a different path._ Down, down, down even further into the abyss. _He led you down the path to escape even as the shadows poured from his chest._

The spiraling suddenly flips, and you find yourself mostly upright again. You shake your head for a moment and look around as you come out of the trance of a small panic attack. You’re still shaking, and you know it’ll be hours before you can breathe normally again, but you can see the present again. You hadn’t realized that touch and grip would throw you back to the briefest of moments—brief, at least, in the grand scheme of things.

It reminds you of when you guided his hand to the back of your head yourself, confident in his tenderness, eager for the firm, commanding touch. You don’t know if you can ever have that again.

“—just wait a moment, please!”

A whole slew of guards are dragging Pitch away, and your eyes widen even more. You just got him back. The Guardians are either glaring at him or shaking their heads, not stopping the guards wrestling him back father and farther, even as he begs them to stop and wait. Around you are many more hands reaching and grabbing for you.

“No!” you yell, swooping and pushing and crashing through the hands. One manages to clamp over your arm, but you shove backwards, startling them into dropping you. “Don’t take him away again!”

You catch up, grab him by the crook of his elbows, and then dig your heels against the floor. The Yeti and Raconturk holding him pause and look back. They wave at you to let go. More hands reach for your shoulders, but you twist and pull away from them.

“No!” you scream.

You hadn’t fought for anything in your entire life. You meekly went with what everyone said, to the point you were ready to obediently answer questions about a crime you helped commit for the good of a company. Not even to cover for a specific person, just the largely abstract concepts of unity and family they encouraged with a large bribe of a salary and promises of future power. You were ready to obfuscate the reality of everything because powerful people told you it was the right thing to do. They controlled life and death and the systems that chose who got which, and as far as you were concerned, there was no way to fight them. Joining was the next best thing.

But changes have been swirling through you for the last year, and a strange instinct—born of fear and distress and rage and want—courses through your heart.

“Listen to me! For once won’t you fucking listen to me!”

You yank and pull with all your might, trying to not hurt Pitch, but absolutely trying to free him. You kick out at the knee of the Raconturk, but they jump out of the way, shouting something at you. The word has power, apparently. It hits you like a brick wall, and you nearly lose your grip. You dig in even harder as your own knees buckle. The panic attack is still roiling though your head, but you grit your teeth. You’re not letting go.

There’s a small explosion overhead, and a flash of gold. Everything freezes. You look up to see golden sand drifting down from the high ceiling, dissipating before it gets too close to make anyone sleep. At the center of the show floats the Sandman, glaring at everyone running around and holding a bullet of dreamsand at the ready.

“Sandy, what is meaning of this?” North cries.

Sandy wags a finger at him, and then at everyone else. North and Katherine shrug at him, incredulous and confused looks on their faces. You take the distraction to yank Pitch away from the guards entirely. They struggle to focus on either you or him or the bickering Guardians, ultimately doing nothing. Pitch watches you carefully, moving his hands away from you as much as he can.

“Darling, what are you doing?” he whispers. You lean up, wrapping your arms back around him and kiss him.

“I won’t let them take you,” you reply. He darts his eyes across your face, resting briefly on your covered eye, but returning to a steady gaze. He nods, You swivel around to look at the chaos. You feel him lean his head down and place a gentle kiss to your temple before resting his head on your shoulder.

The Guardians are still squabbling among themselves, saying your name, Pitch’s name, saying he overstepped and it was clear what you were reacting to. Sandy occasionally looks up at you and points your direction insistently. None of the others glance your way or ask you to speak for yourself. Your heart pounds in your chest because you know exactly what you must do for them to finally take you seriously.

 _Enough,_ you say to yourself. _This has gone on long enough._

You whistle one, sharp note, and almost everything goes silent.

“Maybe you should do what you haven’t: Listen. To. Me!” Your voice is strained as you still come down from the panic. “You bargained with him about me, but didn’t ask me to the negotiations, or even let me know they were happening! You brought me here and keep me here without asking me how I feel about that. You ambushed me at my own home to kidnap me.”

“We though it best for you if—” Katherine cries.

“Well, you were wrong! Only one person in this room has actively lied to me, but I trust him more right now than the supposed Guardians of Childhood!”

You’re not sure if that’s a comforting or disturbing thought, but it’s where you’ve landed right now. Glaring at everyone, you realize just how tired you are, how exhausting it’s been to just go along with everything. You feel like you did as you scrambled to escape the cage in Pitch’s lair—high-strung, wired, desperate. It’s a new feeling, but the adrenaline pumping through you has you believing anything is within your grasp.

The Guardians look more confused than ever: Katherine fiddles with her hair. Jack twirls his staff. North scratches his head. Only Sandy approaches you, smiling encouragingly and looking between you and his colleagues. Katherine steps forward.

“I just don’t understand,” she says. “He lied to you. He has a terrible history of trying to conquer the world and rule it in fear—big fear, like bigotry and oppression—just so he can be powerful. Not even to have political control, but just so he can feed off of the chaos and lies. He ruined the Golden Age. And even if he didn’t know he’d had a different life before that, he still chose to go through with it.

“So why? Why protect him when he’s nothing but a villain right out of a fairy tale?”

“Because…” Your voice catches on a sob. Pitch is whispering to you, low and soothing, but your pulse is too loud in your ears for you to make out the words. “Because I’m no better than him." You look at her, tears pooling at the corners of your eyes. “I'm sorry. You’ve all tried so hard and been so kind to me, but I made sure you didn’t know my real story because even I don’t really want to face it.

“I was part of the team of corporate chemists who manufactured the mixture used in the Zhuokou Incident. In fact, I was the project lead. My name is all over the contract and NDAs.”

There’s a moment of complete silence. The Guardians, even the previously happy Sandy, are watching you now, mouths open. Even Jack, who by all accounts had little to do with Guardianship before fifty years ago, is glaring at you, confused. And then North says, his voice clipped and strained, “But then you left after incident, correct?”

“Don’t do this, love,” Pitch whispers beside you. “Don’t do this to yourself, please.”

“You left guilty company after that, yes?” North says again, stepping forward. “After you knew what company and military were doing with chemical… After all those people—children and teachers!—died… After war nearly erupted… You left that life. Yes?”

“I died in the middle of the inquiry,” you say, shaking your head side to side. “That’s how I ‘left.’ If I had survived the camping trip I died on, I would have willingly gone back on Monday and said whatever I needed to get Kinetics & Chem off the hook.”

Katherine shakes her head, rubbing her head like she's fighting with herself. “But you… You couldn’t have known _everything._ It was your… You were just doing your… Right?”

“I was the project lead,” you repeat. “And the mixture we used as a basis for the final was based off of an artificial sweetener we’d made a few years before meant for people on diets. One that gave my spouse a stroke and almost killed them.” You pause for a moment as your voice gives out, a painful sob bouncing up and ramming into the lump in your throat. “One that the FDA denied the right to send to market because it didn’t hit their required benchmarks. All it took was a few tweaks to create something even less digestible.

“I didn’t know they were going to throw it in the river,” you add, as if that makes it any better. “Technically, they’d contracted us for a pesticide, but it was a very wink wink, nudge nudge deal. And the regulations were so lax that all we had to do was make sure that, theoretically, ninety-nine percent of pests and less than one percent of humans would die when they ingested it.

“Anything in large enough quantities, however…”

Finally saying it out loud all these years later is sending you right back into a spiral, but not a downward one. Surprisingly, you feel as if you’re ascending. Your heart feels less heavy, even if the sensation of guilt remains, but this guilt feels less like a burden and more like a memo for regret. Regret is supposed to come from hindsight; you’ve been living in regret born of unconfirmed foresight, and you’d like a change of pace for once.

“After I became a ghost, I gladly stayed hidden in the woods and ignored my previous home, my job, and frankly humans in general. I pushed it all straight out of my mind and threw myself into discovering all I could about the new world I could suddenly see.” You look at them all, suddenly a little angry. “Just curious, but why are you all so eager to find excuses for me and what I did?”

“W-well…” Jack starts. “You never really did anything bad to us. You seem nice, even.” He scrunches his face up, like his words are going sour in his own mouth.

“This is different,” Katherine says, though she sounds a little unsure. “I mean… you regret it, don’t you?”

“I didn’t until maybe ten years ago, and even then, I didn’t really regret my part in the whole thing until one year ago. When life kind of… pulled me back into it.” You flicker your eyes over to Pitch. “Until then, regret was just an abstract concept of ‘I was kind of part of this really bad thing.’ But it’s a little more complicated than that, isn’t it?”

The Guardians are glancing around at each other, trying to get one of them to say something concrete.

“Please let him go,” you say, reaching back to Pitch and his trapped arms. “I realize there are agreements in place, but please, I’m begging you—” You shake your head. “No, actually I’m _demanding_ that you let him go. Since you didn’t include me last time, this is my demand for this agreement, my negotiation: I'm as much a villain as he is. Don’t take him away from me again.”

North waves his hand, looking contemplative and guilty, and you hear the chain links vanish behind you. They’ll probably want to speak with you later, but for right now, you reach and grasp Pitch’s hand.

“I believe we have another forty-five minutes or so together,” you say.

North nods and motions for one of his yetis to go with you. By now, the crowd around you is thick and overwhelming, and the panic is taking over again. The Guardians look dazed and the least bit angry.

You start leading Pitch out of the crowd. He grasps your hand in return, rubbing his thumb over your knuckles. You lead him outside to the nearest balcony. The adrenaline kick from your frustration has worn off, leaving you visibly trembling and short of breath. You lean on the railing, still clutching him, and take a deep, deep breath of fresh air, holding it for a moment, and then slowly releasing it. You’re practically doubled over the edge in order to hold yourself up on your shaking knees. Pitch slides up beside you, sitting down on the railing and facing you.

Despite your physical reaction right now, you feel lighter and more solid than you probably ever have. And that’s yet another problem for you, because you can’t go back to meek reclusiveness now. No more carefully cultured ignorance through isolation. That door was torn open a year ago by the man sitting next to you. A part of you resents him for doing it, but here you are, lacing your fingers through his as you catch your breath, accepting that nothing can ever be the same, safe bet again. You squeeze his hand and smile as you let the panic shake out of you.


	29. Good Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cheers to >1k hits you beautiful readers, you

He waits, silently and patiently, for them to speak. They squeeze his hand, and that’s the most they do for several minutes besides evenly inhale and exhale. A part of Pitch worries they’ll need to entire rest of the hour they have together to pull themself together, and there’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants them to say. He glances over to their yeti chaperone, who stands against the wall with their arms crossed. Pitch gives a little nod, but the yeti only rolls their eyes.

Pitch shifts his gaze out to the snowy land in the distance. It’s stark and blank, save for little divots that create blue and purple shadows among the golden-pink tinged snow. The sky is frighteningly clear, with only one or two lavender clouds drifting across the reaching beams of the dawn.

The dawn.

For the first time in awhile, Pitch takes the time to really watch the world wake up. The sunbeams bounce off of the sea of frozen water, creating sparkles that dance over the mounds of snow, looking like ground up diamonds or glass. It almost hurts to look at, but for once, he’s not in pain because the light itself is rejecting him. Instead he is a welcome guest, bidden to look at the land in the light until his most mortal limits have been reached and he can look no further. He blinks, and the tears that spring up from the realization freeze almost instantly. He brings his hand to the small crystals and wipes them away. His fingers sting as they touch them, but as soon as he lets the teardrops fall off the balcony to mingle with the rest of the snow, another sunbeam peeks over the horizon, landing directly on his hand.

It’s warm, and gently so. At least as warm and inviting as the spirit’s hand still clasped around his.

 _Who knew the sun could be so kind,_ he thinks, turning his hand over a few times, watching the glow of the star that breathes life into this rock dance over his palm and knuckles. Dark and cold go well together—he’s said as much before—but if he is no longer of shadow, and if he does not feel called to the light, then where does that leave him?

 _“Oh dear, little shadow man…”_ A voice so soft he almost misses it echoes over the cracking ice. A voice he’s heard and conversed with once before. _“You seem to have misplaced your shadow altogether.”_

He’s not sure if he’s making it up, imagining a stern yet soothing voice to be concerned about him. He was quite sure that he’d been hallucinating the voice when the shadows nearly drowned him, but here, over the crystalline landscape, it sounds closer and more real. He listens for a few minutes, straining to hear the voice again. There’s nothing, just the odd echoes of shifting glaciers in the distance. Pitch returns to watching the hypnotizing landscape.

Deja vu washes over him, and he visualizes himself standing on the deck of a starship, watching crystals of stardust blink and twinkle in the lights of the nearest stars. It’s not so much a memory as it is a feeling of want for something he had, cannot ever have again, nor deserved in the first place. A compilation of a life once ruled by sentimentality and moral purpose. He closes his eyes, concentrating on the feeling of warmth on his face, how the light slips through the thin skin of his eyelids to create an orange blindfold. Try as he might, he cannot find any memories of his time with the fearlings where he ever allowed himself to just watch space glimmer from the deck of his ship. Just aggressive focus on the next conquest, hunger for the next hit of fear and glory, and darkness so thick and empty that one could mistake it for primordial nothingness.

He opens his eyes and looks at the shadows cast by high mounds of snow and distant, craggy glaciers. They are shallow, but lively. They will die as soon as the sun shifts position, but until then, their color creates the landscape where there might otherwise be nothing but a flat, depressing wall of white. Like a prison with no bars, only stark hopelessness to keep people in.

 _Sublime._ That is the only way he can describe this new dawn.

“You look incredible.”

Pitch looks at his spirit. They’re watching him, taking in every inch of his new robes. He plucks a small bit of fabric between his fingers and shrugs.

“This? This is… It’s based on Golden Age design. The Sandman… It was a gift…” They take a step forward and run their fingers over the sleeves and collar.

“Like you just stepped right out of a fantasy novel.” He feels heat rise to his cheeks under their scrutiny. “Well… I suppose it could also be science fiction since you’re an—”

“Alien?” He grins, and they return the smile. They turn his hand over in their own.

“You’re not quite as gray anymore, though.”

“Don’t worry, I still look ghastly,” he chuckles, then he sighs. He brings his hand up to his line of sight. It is a warmer tone, but he’d never truly pass for human. Or a Golden Age citizen, for that matter. “It’s probably because they took my powers away.”

The spirit places their hand on his chest, right over where the Nightmare Man had stabbed through him. They’re still trembling, and he can't help but admire how much control they have over themself to be this active in the midst of panic. His wounds had closed awhile ago, with odd, streaking scarring from all of the stab holes. Like he’d been stained from merely touching the viscous shadows.

Pitch reaches out slowly to the spirit, brushing the tips of his fingers on the dark mark on their shoulder, which peeks from under the collar of their cloak. It feels empty, cold, hollow. If he could still reach out to the shadows, he imagines it might feel weak or stagnant. There’s not much movement of the shadows, it seems, though without a direct connection, he can’t really tell. His spirit tenses up, and he moves his hand away. They look at him and step forward into the touch again.

“Sorry,” they say. “It feels weird if something touches it for too long.”

He skips his fingers up to their face, cupping it in his palm as he runs his thumb around the edge of the lens. It’s too dark to see through, but he has to see the extent of the damage, has to know what he’s done. Reaching up to the lens, he says, “May I see?”

The spirit lifts the lens. They hold their hand up next to their eye, blocking it from the sun. Even with this precaution, they blink their eye several times until they can keep it open, though they seem to be having a difficult time in doing so. They wince. Pitch leans in and sees the gray swirling over the eye, and the dark, glittering iris. It’s one of the more beautiful transformation results he’s seen, save for the fact that it happened to the spirit in the manner it did. His stomach turns, and he leans in to press an apologetic kiss to the corner of their eye.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, a lump growing in his throat. “I should have stopped them. I should have been able to wrangle control of them better. This… This shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.”

They drag the lens back down. No doubt with that eye, they cannot bear to have it open to the daylight very long. They shake their head and cover his hand with theirs.

“Don’t worry—” They interrupt themself and try again. “No, no saying that won’t help. I know. But I’m going to say something that hopefully you’ll believe easier than I ever did: I don’t blame you.”

“It’s my fault,” he murmurs. They lean up and kiss his cheek.

“Maybe it is. But I don’t blame you for it.”

Pitch blinks in confusion, but feels a weight lift from him. Just one; there are many, many more still chaining his soul down in the deepest pit of muck. But one lifts away, and he finds himself sobbing, reaching tentatively around his spirit’s waist, and pulling them into a close hug. He starts to cradle the back of their head, but they tense up, and he quickly changes to circling their waist with both arms. His spirit reaches up and encloses him in their own arms, laying their head on his chest. They can surely hear the frantic beating of his heart.

They stay like that, together for several minutes. Finally, the spirit pulls away from him, holding his face in both of their hands. He looks them in the eye, hoping to see the same, relieved expression as he wears, but they comb their gaze over his face slowly. They’re frowning. No, no, it has to be contemplation. He needs that look to be contemplation.

“I think we still need to talk about something, though,” they say.

His heart beats faster, almost choking him. He tries to take a few deep breaths and calm himself. It surely can’t be so bad, he tries to tell himself. He himself has exaggerated fear in others’ responses to those words, sometimes to the point of crumbling the relationship altogether. It’s never as bad as the imagination can spin it to be, as is the nature of all shadows.

Still, he finds himself rushing to say the words, “I-I love—”

The spirit presses their fingertips to his lips, cutting him off. They’re biting their lip to keep it from trembling, squinting their eyes as if they’re in pain. They take a deep breath, and then another, and finally look at him again. Their eyes are shimmering, threatening to spill over with tears. Silently, they shake their head.

*************

You’re beginning to suspect that Pitch either can’t hide his emotions like he used to before, or that he doesn’t realize just how terrified he looks. This isn’t what you meant to happen, but you’re the one who used the cursed phrase. Immediately, you drag his face to yours and kiss him, trying to reassure him. But he just pulls back the least bit and whispers against you, “I’m so confused…”

“I am too,” you admit, stepping back so that you’re both just clutching each others’ forearms. “And that’s the problem.”

You look away, searching for the exact right words. They don’t exist. No matter how hard you look for them, even if you searched for ten thousand years, there’s no easy way to phrase what you need to say right now.

“It’s just… We didn’t get off to the best start, did we?”

Pitch blinks, sighs, and moves until he’s sitting back on the balcony.

“No,” he responds, “we didn’t.”

“You lied to me. For months.”

“Yes. For very selfish reasons.” He pauses, glancing at you a few times. Finally, he forces himself to look at you. “All the while trying to figure out how to manipulate your view of this life. To join me against _them.”_ He jerks his head back to the workshop. “I’m so, so sorry. About everything.

“But I meant what I said the night you called for me. The night we…” You smile a little. He nods. “I swear to the farthest reaches of the universe, I did not lie about the important part. I never expected to… to fall in l—”

One again, you place your fingers over his mouth. He looks sadly from them to you.

“Meanwhile,” you say, “I was just using you as another way to run away from everything. A band-aid over a gaping wound. A pretty distraction.” You run your fingers through his hair, and he perks up when you call him pretty. “But what did I really know about you, the mysterious figure in the dark I can’t see who’s taken a sudden and powerful interest in me? Makes for a good bodice-ripper, I guess. And a good way of tempting fate to either give me consequences or death.” His shoulders sink in dismay at that. He’s so expressive now that you can see him properly. "I guess what you told me not long after we met is true, even if you were lying at the time: I tried to pretend I had no life before this one, and I fell apart. It was a long time coming, but if guilt hadn’t gotten me, it would have been the isolation. And then the guilt.

“I had decades to go back to my family and check on them. Even if they couldn’t see me, I had the time and I actively chose not to try. And now I can never, ever get that time back. I can never, ever see and hear with my own senses whether or not my spouse would have forgiven me for all I put them through.”

“What you did was hardly as bad as all I’ve done.” He looks at the mark on your neck.

“By sheer quantity, maybe. But I was still trying to make excuses for myself instead of facing anything. I’m so exhausted now.”

You bury your face into his palms. He plays with some of your hair that drifts between his fingers.

“Darling, I’m even more confused.”

“I know, I know. I just… I can’t hear or say what I want to right now. And I so badly want to say it.”

He grabs the sides of your face and turns your face up as he says, insistently, “I. Love. You.”

You shake your head again. “We’re not ready. Not for that. Not when we’re each ten messes at once. I can’t take back what I told the Guardians; I have to face it and, maybe even find a way to make up for it.”

“What does this mean for me, then? For us?”

“I still want to be with you,” you say, kissing his palm. He closes his eyes and breathes a sigh of relief. “But we have to really earn those words, I think.”

“Then let’s start over. No more lies and trickery. No more attacks and shadows.” He pulls out of your grasp and holds out his hand in greeting. “I am Pitch Black. I used to be the Boogeyman. You, however, may call me Kozmotis.”

You reach out and grab his hand, raising it to your lips. He chuckles.

“How forward.”

“Koz… I’d like to be able to do that, but what’s done is done.” You lace your fingers through his. “I’ve already tried running away from my sins, and all it got me was crushing regret. I can’t—I _don’t want_ to just run away again. I don’t want to close my eyes and pretend this never happened. I want to do better. For once in my life, I _want_ to be better than I am. And to do that, I can’t just take you, like I just took my spouse.”

“You’re not just taking me. And I doubt you merely ‘took’ your partner.”

You grimace, but if confessing your involvement with the Incident made you a little lighter, this will too. It’ll hurt as much, but it’s a start.

“When I met my future spouse, they were already with someone. They’d been with her for five years, and not too long after we met, their girlfriend told me she was looking at rings to propose to them with. I decided that if I certainly didn’t deserve to have them, then she didn’t, either. I spent the next six months barging into their circle and starting half-rumors about their girlfriend. The miscommunication got so bad between them that soon enough, they dumped her. Their ex even transferred to a different university to finish their doctorate.”

“They still married you, though.”

“That wasn’t part of the plan.” You mull it over for a moment. “Maybe it was part of a subconscious plan. As far as I know, neither they nor their ex never found out who drove them apart. As sick as it sounds, I really did love them. And I think they really did love me, despite everything.”

Pitch looks at you with an astounded, even awe-filled expression. He holds your hand and reaches out to the other.

“Well, if you’re not running, then what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to not-run with me. Maybe once we figure out how to take care of the fearlings, we’ll be able to live like we want to. Whatever that turns out to be.” You run your thumb over his fingers, and then surreptitiously scoot until your long cloak obscures both of your bodies. You run your hand over his chest again. “Besides, there’s a lot we haven’t tried yet…” You inch your fingers down until they’re hovering over where the skirt of robes begin. His breathing hitches for a second, and he leans in very close, smiling.

“You’re going to get us into so much trouble,” he says through his clenched teeth.

“Would that be so bad?” you reply.

He reaches up to twist a finger through a bit of hair hanging down in front of your face. He gives it a soft tug before resting his hand on your shoulder. His face softens, and he says, “No, I don’t think that would be so awful after all.” He looks contemplative. “But I do wish you’d let me say what you deserve to hear. My past family is gone, my powers have left me, I’m actively working to undo my own goals. You’re the only thing I have left in this world that I want to fight for.”

“You had a family in the Golden Age?” You shake your head and refocus. “But why not fight for your past life? Why not fight for something more than just me?”

“Because I lov—!”

“Stop,” you say. It comes out so low and sudden that he goes silent immediately, and you hear the yeti shift in curiosity. You stare at Pitch, eye to eye. “I don't want you putting all your eggs in one basket. You should live your life for more than one thing. You should be able to look at this world and see more potential than to live just for one, minor part.

“Besides, if you'll recall, your majesty,” you watch his mouth twitch, and his hand squeezes your shoulder. “I’m just not someone who enjoys that spotlight. Responsibility, yes, otherwise I’d’ve made for a poor project lead at my job. But I don’t like being the center of attention. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I was doted on.”

“Even if you deserve every ounce it?”

You chew on the inside of your cheek for a second, thinking it over. You’re coming around to the idea of deserving happiness in your life, but it’s a long way off before you grow enough of an ego to think you deserve his or anyone’s unwavering adulation. You don’t know what to say, so you just shrug. Maybe five minutes passes in silence between you two. You just stare into each others’ eyes, trying to will him into understanding what you mean. Finally, words come to you.

“I’m not saying ‘no,’ just ‘not yet.’ Let’s focus on what’s in front of us for now, Kozmotis. After all of this is over, if your feelings stay the same, and don’t change or fade away…”

“I’ll say the words again. As many times as you want and need to hear them.”

The sunrise is turning into daylight. The sky turns from rosy gold to green to blue, and the shadows grow cooler and fainter. The hour is almost up. You haven’t been keeping exact track, but it’s only a matter of time before the yeti leaning against the wall or one of the Guardians drags Pitch away from you temporarily to fulfill the other parts of their agreement. Until then, you hold Pitch’s hands in yours, looking into his golden eyes as he stares back into yours. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, but as long as he’s there with you on this journey, perhaps you can both find a way to reach higher than you’ve ever been able to before.

It’s still too soon before North appears on the balcony to collect Pitch. He glances between you two, and gives you a confused look.

“It’s time,” he says, motioning for Pitch to follow. He points to you, “And you will go to room. Phil will escort and guard you.”

You nod, tightening your grip as Pitch starts to move away from you. Pulling him back one more time, you give him a long yet chaste kiss on the mouth. He sinks into it as if this is how everything is meant to be. Maybe it is. You hope so.

You linger with your lips against his, watching him watch you. He whispers your name.

You whisper back, “Good morning, Kozmotis.”


	30. A Round Table With Two Sides

Once again, Pitch stands under the scrutiny of the Guardians, all of whom watch him carefully as they surround a hand carved and painted map of the world laid out on a ridiculously huge table. A few of them have conflicted expressions on their faces—the Cossack, the little goose girl, Frost. Sanderson has the decency to look neutral, and the fairy and rabbit still have yet to find out the extent of the spirit’s past. He’s grateful for that last part; those two are high-strung enough without having learned that the spirit they went to such lengths to protect was a willing actor in the horrific event that set the stage for his return.

The globe in the hub of the lower workshop glitters with flashing believers. The iron one in his former lair should be doing the same. Though he does notice that the southern hemisphere is still struggling thanks to his work on it over the last year. The belief there is far stronger than he had been planning it should be by this time, but judging by the team of yetis taking notes and filling out paperwork, his work has at least stymied the Guardians a little bit. He feels the smallest twinge of pride for this, despite that fact that he’s about to completely undo it all.

 _I wonder if the fearlings and Nightmare Men are plotting something new,_ he muses.

A flash of color catches his eye from the lower workshop, and he watches the yeti named Phil escort the spirit away. They hang their head as they walk, though they start to turn and look back. Pitch feels his heart seize up, wanting to be there with them, but having to fulfill the obligations of his truce. And on top of everything else, the spirit—the one thing he has left in this or any world—cannot say their feelings out loud. It’s frustrating. It seems like it should be so simple.

He sighs. It’s not nearly as simple as it should be, really. The spirit didn’t want to run away again just because their past was difficult and uncomfortable. The sentiment had reached out and attached itself to the back of his mind, and it continues to bury itself under his own skin. It settles there, tugging at the newfound images connecting his mind to his previous life as the most celebrated general of the Golden Age and trying to reconcile it to the person he’d fallen so far to become. He shivers, as much an involuntary reaction to being at the North Pole as it is an attempt to shake away the false nostalgia of the bygone era. He doesn’t remember half of his time before the shadows, and he doesn’t care to. A wife and child—who are most certainly dead after thousands of years—haunting his scattered memories can’t be worth losing himself over.

But for the spirit in front of him, he will be there. They want him to stay with them, and he will happily oblige, even if they can’t fully reciprocate his feelings at the moment. He’s patient; he can wait for them to realize. The spirit glances back one more quick time, smiling his direction before disappearing into the mild chaos of the workshop, being led to their own room to wait for the other shoe to drop.

“C’mon, Boogeyman, let’s get on with it.”

Speaking of which…

Pitch turns at the sound of the rabbit’s irritated drawl. The poor, poor creature is still frazzled looking, more patches of fur sticking up in odd ways, trembling as he shakes and twitches from his frantic efforts. He’s finishing up handing a pile of eggs and brushes and paints to a contingent of fairies and yetis, both of whom look ridiculous handling such delicate products with their ill-proportioned bodies. The small fairies struggle to roll each egg to a painting station. They lean their whole bodies over each one, splashing splotches on the shells with their soaked feathers, ruining all of the carefully planned layers of color. The yetis hold the eggs so close to their faces that Pitch wonders if they’re in danger of accidentally inhaling them, if the oversized oafs don’t accidentally crush them. He stifles a laugh, instead fully facing the Guardians and locking eyes with the rabbit in particular. One of the rabbit’s ears twitches in a regular tic.

“Right,” Pitch finally says.

He sweeps back over to the table and leans over it. Time to concentrate, to slip back into the role of strategist and general. It hurts more than he thought it would to start actually deconstructing his plans—his life’s work, the only purpose he’d ever found for himself on this planet. The part of him that wants the satisfaction of undoing the traitorous shadows, however, is much stronger.

He clears his throat. “Thank you all for having me. Hopefully, after we’re done here today, you’ll have enough information on the shadows that you’ll finally be able to appreciate a well-laid plan.”

“Oh c'mon. Don’t start this right away.” Frost, in a stunning and completely out of character show of immaturity, holds his staff tilted toward Pitch, a faint charge of blue swirling up the twisted bark. Pitch shrugs.

“Fine.” He leans over to Oceania on the map and taps his finger there. “As your rabbit friend oh so kindly and gently let me know not too long ago, he’s finally noticed my efforts around the tunnels of the Warren. Just in time for the holiday.” There’s a huff. Pitch manages to control himself and not crack a satisfied smile. “If it sounds familiar, that’s because it’s supposed to be. Fifty years ago, I got _so close_ to completely stamping out all belief—and thus you lot—and that was only possible because I and my nightmares attacked key points at key times. A stolen memory here, a lost holiday there, a charge for the last light and—” Pitch flares his fingers. “Poof. No more Guardians, only despair.”

“Get to point,” the Cossack says.

Pitch rolls his eyes. They can’t even appreciate the _presentation_ that goes in to a good speech. These people follow a loud, boisterous man dressed in bright red who invades homes every December, and yet they cannot stand a flourish or two. Pitch takes another deep breath to calm himself. He imagines he’ll be hyperventilating soon enough.

“The point is that interrupting belief is a lot easier than it initially seems. Human children’s psyches are fickle and fragile, even if their ignorance makes them more bull-headed than they deserve to be sometimes. However, if you completely take away the regular rhythms of their tiny worlds, they fall apart. Which is why I and the shadows were going to not only interrupt Easter this year, but to kill Spring entirely.”

There’s a moment of silence as he lets them process what he’s said. The Guardians all shift uncomfortably, but the rabbit just sits forward, scoffing.

“I’d like to see you try that.”

“Then let me go be with the spirit and you rest easy until the shadows spring their attack,” Pitch replies. “You can watch the days become pale imitations of what they’ve ever been, and watch the children you claim to protect fade into depressed, anxious adults overnight.”

“Kids’re stronger than that, and Spring’s more resilient than ya know,” he retorts. “Even your last attempt never got close to killin’ Spring.”

“Look, rabbit, I don’t know how to express any more emphatically that I put a lot more thought and time into this attempt than the one fifty years ago. I had my fearlings and Nightmare Men this time on top of the nightmares and corrupted dreamsand. I managed to sneak up on all of you and take over Burgess because I gained power in secret, avoiding major metropolises and certain continents to spread fear in.

“Half of the weak shadows you’ve found in your tunnels over the last two or so months were probably the scouting missions I sent out to find the source of Spring itself, so that when the day of attack came, we would go straight for it.

“And lo and behold, right before the shadows turned on me, we finally found it.”

This finally grabs the rabbit’s attention. If a Pooka could pale through their fur, this one would be doing so. He’s trying so hard to maintain his dismissive attitude, but more and more of the whites of his eyes show through, his nose twitches faster, and the tic of his ears returns. The source of Spring was a powerful point on this planet, a junction of several forms of magic aligned with new life, redemption, and hope. It was one of the few things standing between a lively planet filled with content humans, and a planet overrun with despair. Pitch watches the rabbit come to a stunning, wonderful, and hopefully sobering realization. Then he just looks confused.

“Wait. If ya found it, then why—”

“Wait to attack? Why not just go for it right then and there? Because,” Pitch places both hands on the table and leans in, trying to capture the semblance of menace he had when he could make shadows wrap around him, “the plan was to _hurt_ you. To return to you every scrap of loneliness and helplessness you have ever forced upon me, but tenfold, a hundredfold, as much as I could possibly muster to make sure you _never_ forgot.”

The rabbit leaps to his feet and reaches for his weapon. Pitch remains where he is, glaring at the Pooka. He’s content to call his bluff and watch the rabbit struggle. Though, he’s more keenly aware that not only will he be subdued if he tries anything, but he has no means of defending himself anymore except the terms of their agreement. They stand there, watching each other for a second, until the tip of Frost’s staff juts between them and flares up again.

“Enough!” Frost yells. “Bunny, look, I know you’re on edge because of your deadline, but we have to make sure Easter actually happens this year.”

“Thank you, Frost,” Pitch says. The boy rounds onto him next.

“Just shut up with the theatrics and tell us what we need to know! Cripes, we’re so sick of this runaround.”

Pitch stands back up. The rabbit settles back into his seat. Frost looks between them and says, “So, you found the source of Spring, and you waited to attack it to really hurt belief and stuff.”

“Of course,” Pitch says. “The goal was to make a two-pronged attack and accomplish several goals at once. First and most obvious of all, it was to disrupt Easter and diminish belief in general—to invade parts of the Warren so thoroughly that it would take years, if not decades to empty your base of the scourge.

“Secondly, as I mentioned, it was to corrupt the source of Spring, thus dooming the world to comfortable apathy, as hope would not reappear even as the planet turned.”

“Geez,” the fairy mutters shaking her head. He squints his eyes, really wondering if she has no idea what else he’s been up to. Most likely not, as she doesn't even have the capacity to focus her attention on this meeting where the literal fate of their organization and existence is being hashed out.

“Yes, fairy, it’s quite a lot, I know.” Her feathers bristle, her crest raises and lowers, and she goes back to pretending to listen as she doles out retrieval assignments to her minions just behind her. She might truly not know. If that’s the case, then now would be the perfect time to make his final point. “However, that’s just one half of the plan.”

“You said it was a two-pronged attack,” the little goose girl says quietly, pausing from scratching a quill in her journal. “You’ve already listed two prongs.”

Pitch turns back to the fairy. All this while, she’s been trying to quietly give orders to her smaller fairies, whichever ones aren’t preoccupied with eggs. She’s not known for her subtlety, however, so there’s just been a low hum in the background of her excitedly pointing out tooth after tooth to retrieve. She’s not even paying attention enough to see Pitch staring her down. One of her tiny fairies has to notice for her, and once it does, it squeaks in fright and hides behind her shoulder. She finally pauses and scowls up at him. The other Guardians tense up the longer he silently stares.

She finally says, “What?”

“Tell me, fairy—”

“Toothiana.”

“—how have the animals around your palace been? Happy and settled in their habitats? Giddy and joyous? Eager to play with you and your tiny fairies whenever you manage to find a free millisecond?” Her brow furrows in confusion and the feathers of her body twitch in a wave over her shoulders. “Are the plants healthy? Have the flowers been blooming on time?”

“What did you do?”

She growls with such ferocity that he’s genuinely taken aback. The quiet ones and cheerful ones always have the strongest, most terrifying outbursts of anger. She isn’t reaching for her blades, but the way she’s glaring at him and the way her miniature fairies have fallen into line, she’s one answer she doesn’t like away from attempting murder. Pitch is rather impressed, but slightly more aware of how outclassed he is without his powers. The rabbit is too easy to rile up; the fairy has more resistance, but is deftly lethal. He runs his tongue through the gap in his teeth where she'd punched him half a century ago.

“I did nothing outside of my usual character, I assure you,” Pitch says slowly, trying to subtly shift farther out of her striking range. “But suffice to say that if you were to really look around your home, starting about fifty miles out, you’d notice uncanny cracked rocks, dead patches of grass, dried and decaying trees, and haunted carcasses in increasing frequency. They’re places where the shadows have thinned the veils between this world and my… the shadows’ realm. It’s the same technique I used to prime Burgess for invasion. Anyway, the idea was to not only kill Spring, but also to steal the memories at the same time, that way despair turns to numbness turns to normalcy.”

She deflates in her chair, a thousand-yard stare overtaking her. This is probably the quietest he’s ever heard her, and thank goodness for that. As the fairy revisits the agony of the last time so much belief in her evaporated, Pitch looks around the rest of his audience, really trying to drive home how thorough and absolute these plans are.

“Again: the new plan was the old plan, but with the added twist of attacking both places at once, temporarily surrounding and drowning the Tooth Palace and the Warren in shadows. Though, it was not with the intent to completely take them over at that point, as I did with Burgess. That would come soon enough.”

There’s a round of continued silence as the fairy and others continue to calculate the danger of simultaneously losing the tooth boxes and Spring at the exact same time, with no chance to mitigate the damage by collecting teeth themselves as they had done before. Frost and the goose girl are leaning their heads together, whispering frantically and poring through the pages of her book. The Cossack paces, not noticing when he steps right through the busy bees at the egg painting stations, earning a reproving look from the yeti sat down there who’s delicately holding an intricate egg between its gigantic thumb and forefinger. The fairy and rabbit glance at each other, a silent conversation working its way between them

My, oh my, does he wish he could still taste their fear right now. Instead, all he does is cross his arms. And then there’s a soft cough. Sanderson clears his throat and floats himself onto the table.

“So,” he whispers. The others pay attention at his voice. “There’s a big storm coming at Easter. How do we stop it?”

“Quickly,” Pitch says. “Because if they remain on the same track I set them on, they’ll be making their move the night of the new moon before Easter. About five or six weeks from now. Not to mention they have that eldritch horror of a shadow on their side now.”

More silence. More exhausted and terrified looks. The rabbit puts a paw to his head and leans over the table, rubbing his fingers over his forehead like he’s trying to soothe a migraine. Frost takes a deep breath, squatting in his chair and crossing his arms over his knees.

“You’re right, Pitch,” the boy says. “That’s a heck of a plan we didn’t see coming.”

The compliment, whether it’s genuine or not, warms his heart. “Thank you, Frost.”


	31. Magic and Magic-Adjacent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway i have a [tumblr](https://writentheheart.tumblr.com/). theres literally only links to the fic on there right now bc i want to separate my main. but if you need to drop me an anon, im there.

Back in your room, you start reading your book as quickly as possible before the meeting lets out. As you saw during your outburst earlier, Katherine didn’t exactly seem ecstatic that you were part of the problem. You hope she doesn’t rescind all research privileges, but you’re not taking any chances. If only this book weren’t so dense.

You spend the better part of three hours hastily skimming and jotting down notes, occasionally trying to force yourself to go slower so you can hopefully absorb something. But there’s a lot that might not be important. Might. Regardless, you really feel like you’ve been flung back to finals week all over again, trying to re-learn fourteen weeks of knowledge at once. Either that, or the final rush up to your thesis defense. You flip through page after page, glancing at headings and subheadings as you try to bullshit your way through. It’s not really going to work, you know, but the idea of not getting as much as you can out of this hurts.

Finally, you slow down, caught up in a particularly hefty paragraph somewhere in the sections about summoning and runes, internal and external magic, and, according to the heading, “Essence and Matter.”

> Though the days of those clever philosophers have long since closed, the world—nay, even the universe, being of such a confounding and mysterious nature; bearing a new fruit of knowledge but once in every pitiable millennium; turning silently on its side as it drifts through the noxious ether between the stars—has remained a workable mystery. The collapse of what the mortals have taken to calling the Bronze Age did not manage shunt the entire world at once into a dark age, but instead grasped its malicious claws around only a few specific regions; and even then, there were scattered pockets of areas that remained unmolested by the spread of ignorance and forgetfulness. Having gone to investigate these historical reprieves on my many expeditions around the world, I am confident to report that there is always something materially immaterial about such spots. Neither tangible nor intangible, the circumstances enveloping such locations shine with different colors and auras depending on how one examines them; should one fire light beams into the areas, there may be a higher chance of procuring a rainbow that somehow glimmers in a more solid state, not unlike—but very different—from the solid rainbows the fey can conjure; and should one run a spell of seeing in the presence of these areas, one might instead be granted a feeling that different energies are coalesced, as if at the juncture of two natural magic currents. However, to that latter point, it is worth noting that every single one of said pockets of resistance was frustratingly just off from a junction of magic currents or natural phenomenon that could go towards explaining either the odd geographical makeup or presence of the land. For example, a caldera formed from a fire titan’s footprint in a southern African country creates runoff which feeds into a nearby river, and the first hundred miles or so of the stretch of river is an ever-green forest, which is rumored to be home to at least one kind of magical ungulate. Another cliffside in eastern Asia, which was created through the turbulent notions and whims of the Earth itself, creates such varying temperatures and landscapes depending on if one visits the leeward or windward side, and was formed where two fissures deep within the ground attempt to cross and mingle. Both of these phenomena have very reasonable, known, and predictable reactions to spells of seeing and close examination of their positions under the known flows of Earth magic. The areas that managed to resist the ancient dark age, and all subsequent ones, will need a new way of seeing what kind of magic or forces held them together during the collapse, and what still holds them together and stable across the changing centuries. If one day we should invent a way of seeing that which is unseeable with the naked eye or most powerful of seeing spells, we should be that much closer to examining what matter makes up the universe.

You’re caught on the ideas of finding new ways to see, especially when it talks about these weird little areas that managed to survive a dark age. There’s something familiar about the way the author talks about it, especially when he mentions shining light at things and searching for hidden energies. In fact, it’s so familiar that you nearly smack yourself when you remember. Spectroscopy, a testing methods to see what something’s made of.

You have a spectrometer, of course, but it’s never been the most reliable machine of yours, given how old it is. And it was already probably ten to fifteen years old when you first stole it from a lab about sixty years ago. Come to think of it, both of your centrifuges could use an update, too, but you hate the idea of letting them go when they’ve been like loyal companions this whole time.

 _This is how seventy-five years passes with few to no breakthroughs in a research pursuit,_ you think to yourself. _Bad practice and sentimentality towards lab equipment. And becoming a hermit, but that’s a whole nother issue._

Finally, the knock on your door you’ve been waiting on comes. Three sharp, quick knocks, and Katherine calls out, “I need to speak with you.”

You place a piece of paper between the pages to mark your spot. Thankfully, Katherine waits for you to open the door instead of barging in. She doesn’t look especially delighted to see you, but she does look more thoughtful than earlier. You give a small wave, holding the book with your other hand.

“So,” Katherine begins. “It’s worse than we thought.”

“The shadows?”

“Yep. Turns out there’s a lot of them poised to attack several of our vulnerable points in about six weeks. He’s been very, very busy.” You bristle and cross your arms, holding the book to your chest. Katherine notices, blinks, and then rubs her head. “Sorry, that’s not why I’m here. We need your help to face this. The new plan is still the old plan… in more ways than one.”

“You want to use my power to make you all stronger.”

“Well, when you put it like that…” she shrugs. You’ve never seen her so agitated. She shifts from one foot to the other, swaying in a small circle where she stands. Her enormous goose, Kailash, waddles up the hallway and snakes her neck over Katherine’s shoulder, filling the whole door frame. Katherine subconsciously reaches out and begins petting the child-sized beak. You shrug.

“Look, at this point I feel like I don’t have a choice to help you or not. You keep calling me a guest, but I’m a prisoner here. A privileged prisoner, but I’m not here because I chose to be.”

“Do you really feel sorry for what you did?” Katherine blurts out. She looks like she’s halfway between anger and disappointment, and Kailash’s feathers start to raise all along her chest. You stand very still and nod. Katherine lets out a deep breath. “Sorry… I’m just very, very unsure of what to think of this. I’m used to simple conflicts of the soul. I meant to come here a bit sooner ago, but I had to take a small flight to gather my thoughts...”

“I understand. Really, I was chasing the high of feeling important back then. Trying to get some semblance of control in my life, I guess,” you reply. “I wish I hadn’t. Wish I hadn’t done a lot. But I’m willing to try something else to balance it out a little and maybe try to be a good person for once.”

You’re trembling, and the pages of the book in your arms softly _fumph_ together in rhythm. You’re saying a lot out loud today that you’ve never said out loud before, and just like the other times, it’s weirdly freeing, even as the truth hammers down on your heart. Katherine looks unsure for a moment, then nods.

“Okay then.” She smiles softly and holds out her hand. You hesitate, but finally relinquish the book. As you place it in her hands, she looks confused. There’s a few seconds where you just stand there and look at each other awkwardly, and then she presses the book back into your hands. “You’d best leave that here. I meant that we need to go really break down your magic, what you know about it, and how it might be able to help us.”

She holds out her hand again. You lay the book down on a side table, and reach out for her. Suddenly, one of Toothiana’s mini-fairies flutters up and starts squeaking frantically, bouncing around Kailash’s beak and your and Katherine’s faces.

“Wait, shush—” Katherine tries to get the poor thing to slow down. “I can’t understand you when you go that fast!”

The mini-fairy finally settles down a little, landing on your shoulder and leaning against your ear, panting. It keeps squeaking adorably in a language you don’t know, but Katherine seems to comprehend. She keeps nodding and saying, “Repeat that?” and “Is that true?” until finally the small fairy gives a thumbs-up and collapses over your shoulder. Katherine pick them up gently and places them on your bed before turning to you, eyes sparkling.

“What’s going on?” you ask.

“We found your dog-creature!”

Kidra! You gasp and grasp Katherine’s arms. “Where? Are they okay? Take me to them!”

"Don't worry, I'll go retrieve them. Shouldn't take more than twelve hours to fly down and get them, and then we can keep training."

"No!" you cry. "No. I need to go with you. I need to get them back myself." She takes a step back from you at your outburst. She looks a little unsure, biting her lip and looking off to the side as she contemplates. You say a little more quietly, "Please, Katherine. I know their commands, and I'd rather you not have to haul them back here yourself with... ropes or dreamsand. Plus, I'm about to go stir-crazy if I only see three parts of this workshop again. Talk to me about magic along the way, quiz me on this book, I don't care! Just please take me with you."

Katherine folds it over in her head for a few more moments, and then nods. She grins like you’ve never seen her do before. She hops onto the back of Kailash, and then grabs you and swings you into the saddle. With one small flick of the reins, you fly through the workshop, past the continuing meeting between all the Guardians and Pitch. She pulls back on Kailash for a second, yelling out to them.

“We’re going to retrieve Kidra!” There’s a chorus of cheers and shouts of “Be careful!” and “See you soon,” except for Pitch, who watches you worriedly.

“I can go with you and help—”

“You’re gonna stay right here and do your job, Boogeyman,” Bunny snipes, yanking the crook of a boomerang around him and shoving back to the table. “They’ll be fine. Katherine’s got them covered.”

You nod to him. He sighs in defeat and simply waves you off. You blow him a kiss, and just as Katherine flicks the reins again, you see him catch it in the air and hold his clenched fist over his heart. The Guardians disappear as Katherine navigates her goose outside into the wide open space of the Arctic expanse.

“All right!” She calls, a wild energy in her voice, flicking the reins again. Kailash honks and flaps faster and faster, climbing higher and higher in the sky. You start getting vertigo, and wrap your hands around anything in the saddle you can find. It reminds you of your first day with Kidra, and your adrenaline spikes at the thought of seeing them again. At the very peak of the ascent, Katherine grins back at you cries, “Better hold on, because I’m going to see if I can break my flight speed record!”

“Wait! Wait—!“

Your cries are swept away from you, like you’ve just taken a baseball bat to the gut. Katherine whoops in joy and laughter as Kailash plummets, the sound almost lost between the rushing wind and your screaming from the unexpected speed. Just as the goose gets near the glittering, ice-pocked waters of the Arctic Sea, she pulls up and you zip over the water, a tall wake springing up behind you. As the saddle levels out, and you’re no longer in danger of being tossed out to your doom, you crawl your way up to where Katherine’s sitting. She glances over to you real quick, and her smile holds a hint of shyness.

“I’m kind of a speed demon,” she says.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

You stay low and cling to the saddle handholds. Despite being on a solid, level surface, the wind is still rushing past, causing your hair and cloak to whip around dangerously. You try to tie the cloak so that it doesn’t act like a parachute and make you fly off the goose. Since becoming a spirit, you’ve noticed that you can withstand a lot more injuries: falling from great heights, slashes, getting flung about. Burns, cuts, and broken limbs also seem to snap back into place eventually. You’re not sure if this is simply a function of being dead-ish or if your immortality grants you a higher resistance. Regardless, the fact that you can get injured terribly makes you sure that it’s only technical immortality, and a great enough injury could outright kill you. Again.

“Where are we headed?”

“To an island in the Mediterranean Sea. I think it’s where the remnants of Atlantis are: the island of Thera.”

“I’m sorry, the what?” you splutter. “Not like I should be surprised at all this anymore. Aliens, ghosts, spirits, magic. Of course, why not Atlantis?”

Katherine giggles, and she looks younger even as her eyes scrunch up in delight. Kailash picks up a little more speed as Katherine explains, “Yes. My father is actually the last survivor. He wrote that book you’re reading.”

_That explains why she’s so protective of these books._

“Is he still around?”

Her shoulders drop at this, and she sighs. Kailash seems to sense this and slows the least bit until Katherine flicks the reins again and the goose recaptures her speed. “Yes, but he’s been traveling for the last century or so with another one of us. About four hundred or so years ago, after a pretty decisive victory over Pitch, they got word from Manny that the stars could use some surveillance. And my father isn’t one to say no to more knowledge.”

“They’re in space…” you whisper. She must be able to hear you just enough because she glances over again and nods.

“It’s been a long time, though. I really miss them…”

Her face settles back into the neutral yet conflicted expression you’re used to seeing from her. You can’t even begin to imagine—not yet anyway—the toll it must take to have someone leave you for that long. Even if you’ll be alive to see them return after all those years. Really thinking about it, you don’t know if you have anyone besides Pitch and the Guardians who would be able to be there. Not your son or great-granddaughter, certainly. The sudden realization of their mortality hits you like a truck at several hundred miles an hour. You have so many things to find right now, and so little time to find them in.

But after you find them, will you keep it up? Are you really going to spy on your descendants for the rest of time? How could you even begin to keep up with that, and at what point do they become effectively unrelated to you at all?

“Are you okay?” You glance up to see Katherine watching you.

“Oh, y’know. Just contemplating mortality is all.”

“Your son?”

“And Alisah.”

“Once we ensure the safety of the Tooth Palace and the source of Spring, we should be able to track them down. Alisah’s about eight, right?”

You think for a moment and then choke a little. “She’s almost nine by now.”

“Then Toothiana should have a fresh enough memory of her tooth box, and we’ll be able to track your son down through her memories. Just… hold out a little bit longer so we can make sure the shadows don’t steal them.”

“I think I can do that.”

It’s hours until you can see the islands. From all the alien and cryptid content you used to binge, you know it used to be called Thera, and sometime in the 1000s BCE, it was a huge volcano that suddenly exploded. The conspiracy theorists liked to use this as immutable proof that it was the same disaster that wiped out Atlantis. A stopped clock is right twice a day, and it seems like it’s time for them to be right for once.

As you spiral in toward the caldera, you can see the bits of the volcanic cone sticking up out of the water, surrounded by an archipelago that used to be in one piece. Slowly, the goose circles lower and lower, and you and Katherine start looking for any sign that Kidra had been through there. From so far up, you can’t really tell, and they don’t seem to be in the mood to do their jump and glide trick. Just in case, you whistle. Nothing. It’s already midday, so your search is probably going to creep through the night if you're lucky; it’ll take the next few days if you’re unlucky.

“That one,” Katherine says, pointing randomly at one of the islands. “They should be there.”

Kailash makes a smooth, perfect landing on a natural cape jutting into the sea. You and Katherine dismount and skirt past the small community there. A few of the children there do a double take and start to wave at Katherine. She smiles and waves back, yelling something to them in what you assume is Greek. There’s a short back and forth, and then they get called in for lunch. The two of you move on. When you’re finally past the village, you really start searching. For such a shrubbery-rich island with almost no trees in sight, it’s difficult to tell whether there’s something unusual on the horizon. You’d think a blind monster with enormous ears and claws would be easy to spot.

“So.” Katherine matches pace with you. “You’ve got the theory of beginner magic down, right? Your bookmark was pretty far in, if I recall correctly."

“Ah… Yeah the bookmark was far in because I ended up skimming a bit. I thought after my confession earlier, you were going to take it back.”

Katherine licks her lips. “I thought about it. But—and I suppose I’m simply biased because I haven’t seen your worst acts in person—I think you are on your way to better things. Zhuokou was seventy-five years ago, and although the region is still recovering in some aspects, the new generation of kids is as fine as they could be. Not perfect, but much better than their parents and grandparents.”

You breathe a sigh of relief. It doesn’t assuage your guilt much, but it helps. “From what I could gather, it’s what everyone keeps telling me about magic: don’t worry about the small details, just feel it and go. And that’s fine and dandy, but I don’t know if I can just let go of questions like that.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“When I was panicking.” You summon your magic to your fingertips. “And doing this is as easy as flicking on a lighter at this point. But the other day, North tried to make me ‘mold’ his wonder into something, and I couldn’t grasp it.”

She nods, and then pauses for a second. She closes her eyes, concentrating on something. A few moments later, a halo of light sparks and forms around her. You lean in, and you can just barely hear the whisperings of various stories in different languages. She looks up at it proudly.

“I call it the mythosphere. It connects all stories, new and old, to all humans. That’s why the same things keep appearing in books and movies and games over and over.” She gestures to you. “If your magic is the essence of creativity, then maybe it’ll mold more easily with this.”

You summon the magic again and inch your hand closer to the halo of stories. As you get closer, you can hear the cacophony of whispers get louder and less comprehensible. You reach out and feel the stories pull towards the iridescence. The magics start to mingle, and you try to dig in. The stories overlap and blend together. Heroes and villains—dozens, hundreds, thousands—are vying for your attention, and it’s so overwhelming. Something familiar… You reach for something familiar.

A rabbit. Sword and armor. Dragon encounter. Death. Descendants on a quest.

You gasp and grab for that story. All at once, the jumble of different stories quiets down, and the story Alisah told you her friend was writing pulls off from the rest and sits comfortably in your hands, one thread of light still connecting it to the mythosphere. You can hear it clearly now, all of the false starts, the stalls, the blocks that are going into the story. It seems unfinished somehow, even though you already can tell how it’s going to end. You dig in, barely registering the “Yes, yes! That’s a beautiful one!” from Katherine at your side.

There’s a gap in the story. The final act is just a list, a dry series of actions and events one right after the other with no tension or connective tissue. The voice from early in the story is muted, the enthusiasm frustrated. You can feel the point where it’s stalled: the first rabbit’s descendant has just found the lost sword, and is setting out for the dragon’s lair. But something desperately necessary is missing. You think of different things that could fill in the action. Doubt. Angst. Reluctance. The sword… the sword is magic. You picture the young rabbit eagerly taking up the sword and needing to use it along the way to the lair, but the magic falters, and the young rabbit nearly loses their friend. Yes. That should do for now.

The point clicks into place, and there’s a sudden light that fills the small halo of this specific story. The next action extends, and it’s as if the story starts creating itself from there. Katherine reaches over and cups her hand around the magic.

“Of course.” She gazes at the young story, her eyes glimmering eagerly. She holds it back out to the halo crackling around her, and the story slips back into the stream. “I think the author of that one is going to be very pleased.”

“I hope so,” you whisper, smiling.

The magic fades, and a small wave of tiredness washes over you. You stumble a step, but Katherine steadies you.

“It gets easier the more you do it. Soon, you won’t get tired as much.”

“I did it.”

“Yes! You did wonderfully. If you can hold on to that feeling the next time, then you’ll be able to really start molding other types of magic around you.”

You like that idea. The both of you keep walking, eventually finding yourselves overlooking a cone-shaped hole with a relatively small spire jutting from its center. It’s a spectacular sight, a natural wonder. You glance over the edge, shielding your eyes from the mid-afternoon sun, and then you yelp. There, right at the bottom of the hole, in the shadow cast by the sun. You swear you can see a lumpy shape blending in among the volcanic rocks. You whistle. One large ear, and then another, perk up and twitch.

“Katherine!” you yell, already jumping into the hole, trying to control the speed of your skid down the conical side. You end up running down the steep slope, caught by gravity’s pull. You whistle again. The lump starts shaking and squirming. A small bleat escapes from it. You go faster, aware that you’re priming yourself for a crash, but you have to reach Kidra as soon as possible.

You’re not sure when the sunlight goes gray, only when the first raindrops catch on your eyelashes. You’re only a few dozen more yards from the bottom, but the storm picks up, and you lose whatever footing you have, slipping and tumbling to the floor of the pit. You think you hear Katherine yell behind you. All you can do is pick yourself up, shake the dizziness from your head, and refocus back to Kidra, still there, still squirming on the other side.

No, you realize suddenly, just as a prolonged lightning bolt streaks across the sky. They’re not just squirming, they’re struggling, tugging desperately against deep black bonds. Katherine screams out your name, and you look up in time to see her, astride her goose, shouting away a tendril of shadow. Kailash darts her beak out and snaps at another.

A moaning sound mingles with the thunder, and you see a dozen or so fearlings rise from the shadows, grinning just as wide and toothily as ever. One or two stand by Kidra, who’s still trying to break free of the shadow bonds.

“Oh…” you mutter as they begin to charge you.


	32. Makes the Dream Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> work's gotten a bit busy again, and my writing has hit a few snags. no update wednesday, 8/5. next update friday, 8/7. just gotta punch thru a tricky section.

Five fearlings stagger toward you through the rain. Their thin, shadowy feet skitter over the surface of the mud that’s now sloshing up around you, getting deeper as the pit you’re in starts to fill with water. Across the way, Kidra tries to stand, despite their legs being bound together. They toss their head and try to roar, kicking out at one of the fearlings watching over them, missing. Above you, Katherine uses her words of power to shout away other encroaching shadows, screaming for you in between breaths. You came here with the idea it’d be a simple retrieval mission. Get in, find Kidra, get out and back to the Pole. You have no bow still, no arrows, and the distilled mixtures of your power catalyst are back in the lab area in the Arctic. The fearlings get closer. You summon magic to cover your hands and dash forward.

All you need to do is free Kidra and get out.

The fearlings jolt toward you as soon as you move, one or two leaping to cover the distance. You slip over the mud a little, catching yourself just in time to dodge the incoming swipes. You kick out, falling to your knee at that point, but your foot connects with a fearling and flings it away. You push against the ground, and it’s just slick enough that you skid forward a bit over the rocky ground. Once you’re behind the line of fearlings, you rise from your knees and book it across the pit.

A wide, black shadow passes overhead, and you flinch as you look up. Luckily, it’s just Katherine and her goose coming in close. You watch Katherine take a deep breath and aim a deafening scream in a language you don’t understand behind you. Half a second later, you hear a series of splashes and thuds. Looking back, the fearlings that had been right on your tail are collected in a heap at the base of the slope you slid down, a dozen yards away. You raise a thumbs-up to Katherine, and she returns it, driving Kailash so that they cut away and spiral up a bit, before coming to rest in front of you. You skid to a stop. The next wave of fearlings is just beyond the wall of feathers in your path, and movement in your peripheral tells you they’re already trying to flank around.

“Grab her feet!” Katherine yells, pointing. She presses her heels into Kailash’s neck, and the goose flaps its wings. You brace yourself against the wind, and move as fast as you can until you’ve grasped one ankle.

“I’ve got it!” you cry.

You start to rise, praying that your grip holds despite the slick mud coating everything and the painful stretch you feel in your arm muscles. If you survive—when you survive this, you might just take up a real exercise regimen in case you need to pull off one of these insane stunts again. The more you hang around the Guardians, the more likely that scenario becomes. You start to consider this a test run for whatever they’re planning for Easter.

Something latches on to your own leg, claws digging into your calf. You scream, more from being startled than from pain. There’s a fearling attached to you, its dizzying array of too many teeth stark against its shadowy body. You kick out at it, trying to either knock it square between its beady eyes or to take out a few of those fangs. Instead, it dodges out of the way, catches your leg with its other hand, and sinks its claws into your thigh. And then it starts to climb. You start to halfheartedly wriggle back and forth, trying to shake it off of you without dislodging yourself from Kailash’s leg. It’s not enough, and your grip is tenuous already. Katherine’s goose has been flying as fast as she can to close the distance to Kidra, but tendrils of shadow shoot through the sky parallel to the lightning, and the air shudders with every shout Katherine gives, lightning and thunder playing in between each one.

You readjust you grip and remove one of your magic-covered hands. The fearling reaches your torso, and you can feel the claws scraping over your skin, piercing through your clothing. You swear you can hear its laughter getting louder and louder, burrowing its way through one ear and coiling inside your head where it rockets off of every corner. Suddenly, it reaches up, clamps its hand around your neck, and squeezes. Most of your breath rushes out of you in your surprise, and you start to choke. It’s barely a few seconds of pressure, but it’s enough to make your hold falter a little. Where the fearling’s hand brushes over the mark, instant and uncanny feeling erupts—not pain, it’s never been pain, but a cross between a shudder and the light tickle of a bug walking over your skin.

You bring your hand down onto its head, concentrate as much as you can under the circumstances, and release a quick bolt of force from your magic. It tries to maintain its grip, but fails, the tips of its claws scraping across the dark patch on your shoulder as it’s pushed off of you. You can feel part of the wound reopen. The fearling hits the bottom of the pit with a dull thunk. It crackles with iridescent energy, eyes widening, mouth opening so it can slither its tongue out and lick its lips.

The weird feeling in your shoulder spikes and makes you shiver so violently that your hand slips from its hold, and you’re following the fearling down into the mud. You try to roll as you hit the ground, like you’ve seen in movies, but the bottoms of your feet hit first, and it feels like you jumped ten feet down onto concrete in flats. Your knees shake and collapse under you, and the shattering jolt moves in a wave up your body.

There’s a whine barely fifteen feet in front of you, hardly audible over the storm. Kidra has shifted a little, getting their legs more or less under their body. They’re still guarded by three fearlings. You glance around for the one you blasted, but it’s running away from you, towards the spike at the center of the pit, energy still crackling around it. It’ll be more clever now; you shouldn’t linger.

All you need to do is free Kidra and get out.

You shakily get to your feet, ignoring the pins and needles in your legs, ignoring the odd sensation on your shoulder, ignoring the other fearling. The three in front of you will do just fine. You redouble the magic on your hands. The shadow of Kailash passes over you, hovering. You stumble forward, whistling.

Kidra performs a flawless roll over, falling on top of one of the fearlings. It shrieks, muffled from under the creature, but can’t free itself.

One of the remaining fearlings leaps and pulls back its claws. You flinch as it comes down. It barely has time to slap you across the face when it gets blasted back by Katherine’s shout, buffeted by her goose’s powerful wing flaps.

The fearling still caught your face, and your lens is knocked loose. Quickly, you snatch it up from the mud and shove it around your neck like a pendant for now. Thankfully, the world is dark enough that it doesn’t hurt so much, but the different levels in each eye still disorients you to the point of stumbling. Nausea starts worming its way through you, as does the preliminary throb of a headache. You can’t concentrate on what’s in front of you so easily, and instead you choose to concentrate on keeping on your feet. But you do notice something odd about the fearling charging you. You squint your damaged eye. Through your regular eye, you see it as you always have, a mass of teeth and shadow. You switch eyes. Through your other, you see layers in the shadows, and within those layers, you see shallow points where the darkness isn’t quite so dense.

You hold your hand up in front of you as it reaches you. You grab at it, missing once due to the messed-up depth perception, but finally you make contact with it, reaching out with your magic until you can sense your magic at one of the shallow points. It’s like it just catches on the right spot. You take a deep breath and shout, sending a bolt right through it. It shrieks like its comrades, and falls, twitching and spasming Oddly, the magic doesn't curl around its outside to strengthen it. The magic swirls within it, attaching itself on to the shadows until it pulls most of its interior to it. The fearling takes one last swipe at you, cutting into the mark on your neck again. You give your magic one last burst through it, and it fizzles away, disintegrating into small particles of darkness. You blink, your eye starting to water in strain now, and resolve to ask questions later; you might just be getting the hang of that part of magic, at least, even if the need for answers gnaws at the back of your mind.

Kidra whines. You’re less than ten feet from them. You close the distance and throw your arms around them.

“Hey buddy! Hey… Oh, I’m so sorry…” you say, burying your face in their mane. Kidra, still bound, manages a whimper and soft bleat, tossing their head and snaking their neck around to nudge you with their beak. “I’m here. I made it,” you whisper to them, carefully petting their neck and back. They start to rumble with a purr. Your arms brush one of the shadow bindings.

You grab one of the shadowy ropes and, squinting your regular eye shut, search its length for one of those shallow points. It’s still difficult, between the strain your eye is under and the difficulty of seeing through the rain and wind. Nevertheless, you see one, and you carefully jab your hand into it, thinking you know what to expect. It catches, just like to other times you searched for the catch to begin molding.

The shadows pull toward your magic. You let it mingle a little bit, and then rip it. There’s a little resistance—a small part of the shadows that holds fast and tries to hold you—but after a second, you tear the shadow apart, and it dissipates like the others, freeing Kidra’s muzzle. They snap their mouth open and shut a few times, letting out a loud enough yowl to cut through the thunder. You move around them, grabbing and tearing at the bindings until they’re standing, shaking themself loose, and nonchalantly slicing their large foreclaws down into the previously trapped fearling. It gives a short shriek and then disappears. Kidra fully stands and stretches out all ten feet of themselves, and you can’t help your self anymore.

“You were so good!” you say, scritching them until they lean so heavily into it that they’re practically laying down in the mud again. You push them to standing, grabbing their head in your hands and placing a kiss to the armor plate on their face. As you move, you can feel the drag of mud and water on your cloak. “I’m so sorry it took so long, but you’re out now, and we can go!”

Kidra paws at you, bleating and boofing, and keeps butting their head into your chest. The force of them nearly has you slipping and sprawled out. You laugh, half because you’ve just had a weird, kind of horrible day, and half because this is one of the best days you’ve had in months. You kiss Kidra’s muzzle again, a bout of hysterical giggles about to escape you.

And then, there’s an almost inaudible high-pitched whine. It sounds like a CRT television powering on, and you can’t so much hear it as much as you can feel it irritating your eardrums. The large goose swoops closer, and you hear Katherine yelling your name.

“Behind you!” she cries.

Looking back to the center of the pit, you see the one fearling that managed to get a good bit of your power fiddling with the weird spire. Except it’s now pulsing the faintest bit of color. The whine gets more and more insistent, and louder. A dark ball of energy concentrates at the tip of the spire for a moment before it flickers and disappears. The fearling jerks its head around and then yells a garbled phrase before kicking the spire. For all its effort, the structure remains inert.

“We gotta go!” Katherine starts directing her goose higher into the sky, and Kidra comes up behind you.

You swing your leg over their back. They tense, ready to spring up at your command. You’re more than ready to get out of here. You give the whistle.

The ground becomes far away very quickly as Kidra flings themself upward several dozen feet. Out of curiosity, you look at the spire with your dark eye, instantly regretting the spike of nausea. But as your concentration cuts through the sick feeling, you see the spire come to life. At least, it comes to life internally, filled with layers of shadows and darkness and violet sparks. It looks like the rock stratification of a cliff folding over and over onto itself, mixing completely, and then separating again.

All you needed to do was free Kidra and get out. But you’re riding high and ready to tempt fate.

You nudge Kidra back around and aim straight for the spire. Kidra obeys, though their ears go flat against their neck for a moment.

“What are you doing?” Katherine yells. Her goose honks in irritation as she’s also turned around suddenly. You just look back and keep on track for the spire. As you reach the final approach, you whistle for Kidra, and they oblige by raising one of their clawed limbs, drawing it back and back until their skinny forelimbs are drawn as taut as a wire. Kidra is finally in range, and you command them to strike. They bring their scythe-like claw down onto the spire, piking into it with a loud _clang!_ A small chunk breaks off.

As soon as Kidra makes contact, a violet color pulses through the spire from bottom to tip. The high-pitched whining returns, stuttering and dipping into different frequencies. You shouldn’t linger. You whistle, and Kidra is more than happy to fling themself up and out. Passing by Katherine, you give her a thumbs up. Kidra flicks open the flap of skin between their limbs, and you’re soaring over the island, straight through the last bits of the storm. They land at the edge of the island, on the highest bit of rock they can find, and spring so high into the air that the clouds are far beneath you. Glancing over to Katherine astride her own mount, you smile. 

“That was really reckless of you!” she yells over the wind.

“Yeah it was!” you reply. She gives you an odd look, but shrugs as you both start making your way back north. You hold tight, slipping your lens back on, and sprawl out over Kidra as much as you safely can, hugging them close to you.


	33. Ally Potential

It’s been hours. Practically a whole day since the spirit and goose girl left. Pitch stands on the balcony overlooking the Arctic, watching the dark skies. Most of his time has been spent arguing with the Guardians over how best to beat back the shadows. He recommends a bulwark around the Tooth Palace, and a similar defense around the source of Spring. He's spent too much time—way too much time—entertaining the shadows and carefully expanding their net of fear to draw from for the plans to be undone by defense alone, however.

“The equinox,” he’d told them. “The first push must come on the vernal equinox, when spring officially begins. The surge of power will help bolster defenses and belief so that you can withstand the attack on Easter.”

“That’s less than a month away,” the fairy had brilliantly observed. “I don’t know what we can whip up in a month.”

Those dolts had then spent a good hour “brainstorming” and interrupting each other and getting distracted and making jokes. Pitch could only rub his head and truly wonder where he’d gone so wrong as to lose to them so many times if they could get this derailed so easily.

His current guard sighs softly from their position against the wall. The other Guardians had taken a long break from planning. Pitch searches the sky again for any sign of the goose girl and spirit.

“We’ve got this, thanks,” says a young voice behind him. The guard grunts and stomps off, and then there’s a “Yo, Pitch!”

Frost hops up onto the railing beside him, and Sanderson does the same, sitting between them. Pitch is determined not to look at them. He already has to deal with these weirdos at the table; he’s not interested in extracurricular discussions, even if he is grateful for Sanderson’s help with his attire. The boy is notoriously annoying, though, and he sits there for several minutes, watching him. It becomes a silent standoff under the barely waxing moon.

_“There you are, shadow man.”_

Pitch perks up and searches all around him at the voice. It’s even clearer now. He chances a glance at the other two, who’re watching him with confused expressions. Both are holding mugs, a thermos perched on the railing beside him.

“You okay?” Frost asks.

Pitch strains to hear the voice again before whispering, “I don’t know. You didn’t happen to hear that, did you?”

“What you just said? Or my own question?”

_“You petitioned me several cycles ago. In the forest at dawn. Just beyond my knight’s fortress. I was unable to fulfill your wish. I think this is far more interesting.”_

A small flash of him right after he returned the spirit’s bow and photo passes before his eyes. He remembers he’d called to Selene, not really expecting an answer.

“Pitch?” comes the whisper of Sanderson.

“Then, you are Selene?” Pitch hold his palm up to silence them before they retort. “You truly exist?”

_“You dally with shadows. You come from beyond the stars. You negotiate with nearly-invisible fellows. Yet, you doubt the moon exists.”_

“I just—”

“Pitch, who the heck are you talking to?” Frost demands.

He gets centimeters away from slamming his hand over the boy’s mouth, but restrains himself. That prevents neither Frost from flipping up his staff in warning, nor Sanderson holding up a small crystal stone—the control for his cuffs, allowing any of his guards to subdue him if they merely suspect dire motivations from him. Pitch quickly drags his hand away from the boy, clenches his fist, and pointedly holds his arm stiffly at his side. There’s a moment of silence. Selene doesn’t speak again.

“Apologies, Frost.” Pitch moves a few paces away.

“My name’s actually ‘Jack,’ but no prob, I guess. Seriously, what was up with that?”

“You’re a very nosy spirit, you know that?” Pitch spits. “Why do you need to know?”

“Look, we’ve all talked to ourselves before out of loneliness or boredom, but you sounded like you were legit hearing something.” Frost scowls. “You could stand to be more polite, y’know.”

Pitch takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and then slowly exhales. Frost isn’t wrong, but it’s not like they’ve made it any easier to work with. There’s a small cough between them.

“Perhaps we should try this again,” Sanderson says. “Good evening, Pitch. Jack and I thought we’d join you out here to keep you company while you waited for your spirit to return.”

“I have no choice in the matter, so do whatever you please,” Pitch replies, turning to the skies again.

He hears the two mutter to themselves, sip their drinks, and then continue to chatter. He looks at the sliver of moon in the sky, trying to reach out to Selene, will her to keep talking. If this is truly the patron of the spirit, perhaps she can confirm that they’re all right and on their way back.

“So space just used to be full of boats—”

“Ships.”

“Same difference. But it was just full of ships—sails and all—floating from planet to planet, asteroid belt to asteroid belt? Sounds dope.”

Pitch steps away another pace or two, not wanting to involve himself in this conversation. He hears Sanderson answer the boy affirmatively.

“Indeed it was. The Golden Age was a time of opportunity and peace and romanticism.” Pitch doesn’t turn, but watches the them out of the corner of his eye. Sanderson has his eyes closed, a peaceful smile on his face. “I was a star captain, piloting wishing stars around so that people could have their dreams come true. I was pretty good at it.”

“I see how you fell in with the whole Sandman bit, then.” Sanderson nods. “And he was a general? A good guy.”

Frost is just beyond the peripherals of his vision, but Pitch is quite aware he’s glued his eyes to him. The boy isn’t known for his subtlety, though at least he’s not nearly as scatterbrained as his fairy colleague.

“He was the best of us. He constantly stood in between the shadows and our civilization, fending them back whenever they go too close.” The way Sanderson whispers that statement shoots pangs of nostalgia through him, as well as frustration. “At one point, I got word he’d actually managed to capture all of the fearlings and imprison them.”

"No way!"

"And Kozmotis himself volunteered to guard it."

There’s something a little too familiar about that—familiar and terrifying. Pitch finally moves all of his attention to the Guardians. He approaches them, Frost flicking his eyes up to see his looming figure nearing. If Sanderson notices him, then he doesn’t show it. Pitch stands next to him for a moment, until it becomes clear that he will not continue unprompted. He clears his throat, and the Sandman looks up, smiling blithely as ever.

“Hello again, Pitch.”

“You were saying that Kozmotis captured and imprisoned all of the shadows.” He nods. “Then how did they get back out?”

Frost perches himself on the railing, squatting and focusing intently. Sanderson sighs and hunches over, toying with his mug.

“No one really knew. One moment, the news was all about how Lord High General Kozmotis Pitchiner rounded up the last of the shadows and dream pirates and shoved them all into a prison the size of a planet. There were celebrations, galas, lots of eating and drinking! It felt like the Golden Age would truly be just that, for the rest of time.”

Flashes of emotions, not so much images, run through Pitch’s mind: tragedy, unease, despair. The least bit of pride, though not in satisfaction of a job well done. Utter and shattering silence except for his own shaking breaths.

“But then?” Frost asks. Sanderson flicks his head between him and Pitch, shoulders drooping.

“Maybe a year or two later, they were out. Suddenly, Kozmotis—Pitch Black—was leading them on a new conquering spree across the stars.” He opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, but closes it again.

“And this is what became of him,” Pitch says, holding his arms out. Frost latches onto him now.

“You have literally no clue? Don’t remember anything?” he presses, looking eager for a juicy tale. Pitch shakes his head.

“I’m afraid most of my memories are completely gone. I just have impressions from my previous life. Specific emotions. Most of the actual memories I still have—all one of them—are of my former family.” He gazes out from the balcony, the mere mention of them summoning flashes of their faces, their smiles, the dull echoes of their voices. A lump appears in his throat unbidden, and the world temporarily blurs. But it’s just for the _idea_ of knowing what he had before driving this; it’s the _idea_ of having lost his time with them that he mourns. “I suppose if I could try to recall what happened, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.”

Frost tucks his hands under his chin. Such childish actions from a spirit well into several centuries of existence. The children he befriends must like his antics. Pitch shoves the boy out of his mind and concentrates, rummaging through the dustiest parts of his mind. It’s mostly just filled with cloudy memories, all overlaid with a filter of grainy shadows. Like his wife and daughter were before the fearlings abandoned him. In fact, far more has been floating back to him in the last two weeks or so than had done over thousands of years with them His stomach clenches as he realizes that they might have been the source of his blocked memories in the first place. For revenge? For torture? No matter, not anymore. He tucks that horrifying revelation away and tries to picture himself the hero Sanderson and Frost want him to be. Standing guard over a planetary prison of fear and shadow.

“Daddy help me!”

A nauseating rush of panic rushes through him as he hears a lucid, sharp echo of his daughter’s voice, sounding like it had in his memory dream weeks ago. She sounds so scared, so trapped, and he _needs_ that voice to truly be hers. On a deep and mournful level, he knows it logically can’t be her, but he can’t quite remember why not. His hands slip on the thin layer of snow and frost covering the railing, and the jolt kicks him out of the state. Sanderson and Frost are watching him closely, eyes wide with concern. He straightens up and claps his hands behind his back, only then realizing they’re trembling.

“Nothing,” he says.

“That couldn’t’ve been nothing,” the boy replies. “You practically had a small breakdown!”

“Well, a series of unpleasant emotions swam over me, all right? Does that satisfy you?!” Sanderson shoots up to his eye level, a warning glare on his face. Pitch sits on the railing and crosses his arms, not caring if it looks undignified right now.

“Sorry.” Frost holds out his hand to shake. Behind him, Sanderson floats just over his shoulder, nodding slowly at Pitch and motioning a handshake. Pitch declines in favor of standing to his full height, a whole foot and a half over the boy. Frost gives him a curious but hard look, retracting his hand. Sanderson purses his lips and shakes his head, hands on his hips.

“I don’t need your pity,” Pitch says, swiftly turning his back to them yet again to search the sky.

“It’s an apology, not pity,” Frost grumbles. “Maybe if you stop pushing people away, they’ll surprise you.”

“You surprised me fifty years ago in the most predictable way possible. Fool me once, though…”

“And honestly? I’m sorry about that.” Pitch turns his head slightly toward him. Not so much that he can see him, but enough to show he’s listening. “I mean, not sorry about joining the Guardians, but sorry that I didn’t try to reach out better once I’d established myself. I maybe got caught up in not feeling lonely anymore.”

Frost is leaning on his staff, strong enough to exist and be believed in, but there’s a part of him withered from his home still being under the control of the shadows. He has a determined look in his eyes, but looks more like the seventeen-year-old he’d died as than ever before. One foot tentatively reaching into responsibility and adulthood, the other firmly entrenched in the bravado and bullheadedness of being a largely inexperienced child. The memory dream of his daughter enters the back of his mind—oh how she was so contrary and indignant at the mere implication that she might not have all the answers. Pitch sighs, but does not budge.

“All right. Fine. Good talk.” Frost shrugs and turns on his heel. “You got this on your own, Sandy?” Sanderson gives a thumbs-up. “Cool. I’ll see you around the table, I guess. Can’t wait to hear you call me an idiot ten more times even though you’re not giving any of our suggestions a whirl, oh great and wise Kozmotis Pitchinier, failed hero.”

He starts heading back inside, surly as ever.

“Oh, come now, Frost,” Pitch calls after him. He keeps walking. “Frost! Don’t be such a—” _Baby? Whiny brat? Melodramatic pissant?_ Pitch falters as his usual talking points try to burst out of his mouth, and the pause is enough to make him think. The boy had just been curious, much like the spirit had been about his time in the Golden Age. Extraterrestrials are something of a natural fascination to the people of Earth, planet-bound as they are. Pitch opens and closes his mouth, trying to shape the right sentence. He looks at Sanderson, who just rotates his hands, one over the other, in a ”get on with it” gesture.

“J—Jack,” Pitch calls. “Please hear me out.”

Jack stops right before the threshold. He turns back and leans against the wall, arms crossed.

Pitch crosses about half the distance. “Jack… Let’s be very honest with ourselves: you have nothing to apologize for.”

Jack only keep looking at him, unimpressed. Pitch takes a deep breath.

“I am sorry for manipulating you and terrifying you back then. You’d barely gotten your feet under you and there I was trying to sweep them out again. You have good instincts on what truly constitutes as a real ally. And that’s not me.”

The boy waits a few more seconds to make sure he’s done. “You could be. Maybe that’s why you’re here now.”

“I believe there are a few of your colleagues who would rather never see my face again.”

Jack points to somewhere behind Pitch. “Like Katherine?”

Pitch swivels and squints against the night sky until he sees it. The large, white goose barely stands out from the darkness, but enough of the scarce light bounces from the ice for him to see. Near the goose is a darker blot in the sky, but as it gets closer, he can see the odd silhouette of Kidra gliding straight for the pole and the workshop. He smiles, approaching the edge of the balcony and leaning on the railing, watching them get closer and closer.

“Yahoo!”

Pitch startles as Jack launches himself off the balcony, catching on a wind that sends him flying out to meet them. 

Pitch spends the next few, agonizing minutes staring at the figures grow larger until finally, he can hear their voice again. He can’t make out distinct words, but his anticipation grows as he catches the cadence of their speech, their laugh cutting through the wind. Finally, finally, they start coming in for the landing. The goose girl gracefully guides her pet to perch on the small space, and she slides down from the saddle. She stretches any stiffness out of her limbs, and Pitch notices that she looks rather haggard and disheveled. He has no time to ask before he hears the spirit call out, “Whoa, whoa!”

Kidra skids across the slick platform, stopping only with the help of the workshop wall. Thankfully, they manage to turn at the last moment, their side slamming against it rather than their muzzle. Unfortunately, that means the spirit is thrown into the wall with the momentum. They bounce back, too far, and they slip right off the creature. Pitch winces and immediately runs over to them. Like the goose girl, the spirit is covered in water and mud stains, and it looks like they got scratched up.

“Hey,” the spirit says, grinning up at him where they’re sprawled out on the floor.

“Good to see you again.”

He kneels down and curls one arm around their back, his other grabbing their arm to help them sit up. As the spirit is finally upright, Kidra steps through his grasp and nuzzles them, whining and pushing into them so much they almost collapse again. The spirit hugs their face and whispers incoherent praise to them, and Pitch cannot believe he’s finding himself jealous of this creature.

“It’s good to see you, too, Kidra.”

He reaches out a hand and gently strokes Kidra’s neck. They twitch, and then turn to him, sniffing once and then burying their head into his robes, snuffling as their ears swing back and forth. He must pass some sort of test, because the creature lets out a low _boof_ and backs up a step, though they’re still monopolizing the spirit.

Pitch hears a snort near him, and Sanderson whispers to Jack, “Remind me to tell you about the Sirius system one day.”

Finally, the spirit manages to push Kidra off of them, stands with his help, and with only a slight hesitation due to their muddy clothes, they press themself to Pitch. He leans down, gently caressing their waist and capturing their lips. They sink into the kiss as easily as ever. The next few weeks are going to be rough, but for now, all is well.


	34. A Month to Grow On

From there, the next few weeks fly by, and its almost too much of a whirlwind for you to keep track. The Guardians, as complicated as their feelings toward you are now, settle you and Pitch into frantic routines that have you both pressing each other up against the walls whenever you’re together out of sheer stress. The first time it happens—after a mere three days of exhaustive planning on his part and exhaustive magic training on yours—you barely give yourselves time to reach a semi-private corner of the workshop before you shove him against a wide pillar and yank his face down to yours. The yeti chaperoning you gives a small groan and leans against the opposite wall a few yards away, crossing their arms and commiserating with Kidra.

“My goodness,” Pitch whispers breathlessly when you break for air.

But there’s no time for that sort of thing, and he knows it. He wastes no time wrapping his arms around you, daring to lift the back of your top under your cloak and hold his hands against your skin. That contact alone has you whining into his mouth as if you’ve never been touched before. He hisses and starts to lightly drag his fingernails up your back as you move from his lips to his neck, licking and nipping wherever you can reach.

He pants against your ear, and his hot breath is only making you more antsy and frustrated that there can’t be more. The Guardians are honoring their end of the agreement so far, but you don't want to push it further than it can go.

You pull back quickly, and he clenches his hands at your back to make sure you don’t escape. You look up at him, at the flush already starting to cover his face, at his half-lidded eyes, and you want so much more. But you just lean your head against his chest, listening to his panting and heartbeat. After a moment, he reaches down and tilts your face up.

“So,” he says, still trying to slow his breathing, his other hand rubbing your back. He looks a little frustrated. “How have your studies been going?”

“Pretty good,” you sigh. “Theory and practice. Practice and theory. I’m getting better at being able to dig in and affect other magics, but there’s still a stupid blockage I get because I try to think rationally about it in science-y terms or whatever.” He presses a gentle kiss to your forehead. “How’s the planning?”

“Getting better. As it always seem to go, the larger the group, the longer it takes to agree on a course of action.” He shifts so that your cloak is draping almost entirely over his arms and slowly dances his fingers up the front of your torso. Your breath hitches as you try not to draw too much attention to yourself. “But Sanderson and Jack have, surprisingly, started to back me up on a few ideas, so there’s been some progress. I can’t wait until they start letting you at the table, though.”

His hand slips up until it’s resting over your sternum. Much as it’s a relief, you lean back the least bit. There’s a microsecond where he looks confused.

“I think that’s a way’s off.”

“Can’t be too long, not if they intend for you to help at the equinox or Easter.”

“True.”

You start feeling the world disappear around you as you meet his eyes. Your heart skips a beat, your breathing picks up again, and his fingers twitch against your chest. If you moved closer, you could feel his pelvis against yours. So close, but not enough. You stand like that for a moment before glancing over to the side, where your chaperone is trying desperately not to move from babysitter to voyeur. Pitch leans in for a kiss, but you move his hands away, smoothing out your and his clothing. Kidra walks over and rubs themself up against your legs. Pitch hesitantly tucks his hand in yours and starts leading you on a familiar walk through the workshop, chatting about the details hashed out so far. The yeti stomps behind you both, following as you eventually make your way outside.

*************

Only a few days later, Pitch once again leans back his seat at the table, waiting for the newest overthinking session to come to no conclusion. This time, it was about finding a way to temporarily move the teeth, the logistics of which are seemingly too complicated to hash out in a rational manner.

“Are we sure we have to move them at all?” the fairy says. “If we’re going to make a belief push and beat back the shadows anyway, why take time to move billions of tooth boxes? We could spend that time propping up more defenses around my Palace and the Warren.”

“Agreed,” the rabbit pipes up. “There’s no sense in tryin’ to move hundreds of years of memories in a few weeks.”

“Just curious, Pooka, but do you genuinely believe that bluster, or are you against the idea on the principle that I suggested it?” Pitch drags himself so that he’s sitting up straight in his chair, fingers steepling. The rabbit bristles.

“Yes,” he replies with no elaboration, moving his attention right back to the fairy and other Guardians. “The memories should be safe in the Palace for the short time the shadows’ll be after ‘em. In the meantime, I’ve started bolstering defenses around it and the source of Spring.”

“I get it, Bunny, but I think Pitch would know best about how vulnerable the tooth boxes could be.” Jack perches like a gargoyle in his chair, like he’s ready to spring at a moment’s notice. Pitch raises a hand his direction in thanks. Both the fairy and rabbit almost turn their seats over in a huff.

“My fairies have stepped up patrols and crafted new barriers since last time!” the fairy yells at the same time the rabbit scoffs, “What would he know? He got kicked outta the shadow club cause of his own hubris. He can’t be that great.”

“One million boxes,” Pitch enunciates clearly. Everyone looks at him, and he focuses in particular on the fairy. “All it took last time was one million memory boxes out of the then-current two billion children across the world.”

The fairy settles down a bit, her face darkening. She knows the position of every tooth, whether it was lost recently or long ago. She should know that last time he’d gotten his hands on a mere fraction of a percent of the total boxes and it was just enough. The rabbit pivots quickly.

“We can always get them back, if that’s what it takes. One mil ain’t that much, like you just said, and with the equinox push, we’ll have a cushion of belief we can more than make up for if any boxes get lost.”

“Bunny, listen to yourself!” The Cossack rubs the bridge of his nose. “We are entertaining idea of moving teeth _because_ of vulnerability! Cushion or no, it is dangerous to have teeth in shadows’ clutches.”

“As I’ve been saying!” These circular arguments will be what finally drives Pitch to insanity. “Bulwark the source of Spring and the Palace all you like, but it’s not that difficult to get the boxes if you know where to look for them.”

At that exact moment, about five tooth boxes clatter onto the table. Sanderson stops them from rolling around and then sits down.

“Did you steal these?!” The fairy lunges and gets right into Sanderson’s face.

He leans away from her. “If anything it was easier for me to do than the fearlings because your fairies know me.”

“That’s very bold,” Pitch says. “When did you even leave?” Sanderson counts vaguely on his fingers, then shrugs.

The little goose girl clears her throat. “We don’t have to move _all_ of the teeth, Tooth. Just the ones belonging to current, alive believers. If we focus on the boxes of children age ten and under, we’ll have to move even fewer.”

“Why not ones over ten?” the rabbit growls, shrinking in his chair a little. She shifts uncomfortably.

“Because that’s the age they start to stop believing.” The table hushes. “Therefore, the strongest source of belief is in the billion or so boxes of children age five through ten.”

“So just forget the other kids, then? They’re just outliers? Just sources of power for us now?” The rabbit look around the table, but even the fairy can’t deny the reality of the situation. “Look I haven’t been the most connected with the little ankle-biters over the years, but they’re more than numbers! I’m not just bringin’ ‘em hope for the heck of it.”

“We have to make a lot of quick decisions right now, Bunny, and if it means retaining as much belief as possible so our whole operation doesn’t collapse, then yes, it’s a numbers game.” The goose girl looks so young, almost resembling the child who nearly undid Pitch multiple times centuries ago. A wave of pity for her runs through him. She’s new to weighing morality versus practicality. She’s been lucky so far that she hasn’t had to compromise herself, but here they are.

“And when this generation of preteens wonder why we weren’t there for ‘em anymore?”

“Then you have to hope that you’ll be there for the next ones after that,” Pitch says. There’s another moment of silence. Pitch watches the goose girl, but she still refuses to acknowledge him. Fair enough.

The Cossack clears his throat. “And now that ‘why’ of moving teeth has been decided, can we please focus on ‘how?’”

*************

“Oh, this takes me back,” you say, carefully holding the egg in your hand. You dip your paintbrush in the dye and bring it up to the shell before it can drip onto the floor. “Me and my partner once got a little too carried away and two bottles of rosé later, we’d painted a whole eighteen-pack of eggs.”

Bunny chuckles. “Well, at least your little tyke had a whole bunch of pretty eggs to find.”

“Actually…” You glance up at him, creasing your brow and trying to not to smile. “This was before my son was born. My spouse and I just happened to pick up some dye kits at the last minute on a slightly-intoxicated whim. We didn’t even remember to hard-boil them before we were painting.”

Bunny lets out a sympathetic whistle. That had been a good night, though. Just you and your partner, trying not to break too many eggs in your increasingly drunken grips. Eventually, you’d just started splashing the dye around, hoping to color them all quickly. It devolved into a splash fight, and there was a green-blue stain on the carpet for five years until you replaced it. The both of you had ruined your clothes, not that those had lasted much longer, anyway.

“When Jordan finally got there, we started using the refillable plastic eggs. Down south, you don’t really want to hide organic eggs, y’know?”

“Oh yeah, I know” he replies, holding up his very precisely colored egg. He sets it to the side, a pile that’s about three times the size of yours, and a hundred times more artistic. “That’s part of the risk of my Easter runs round the subtropics and equator. The parents help a lot when they scatter eggs themselves. I let myself get spotted by kids a little more often, and it keeps their hopes up.”

You lean over until your shoulder nudges against Pitch’s. He glances up from his own, awkward pile and smiles at you.

It had finally landed to Bunny to babysit the two of you as the other Guardians went out to the Tooth Palace to get the tooth moving in motion. In the meantime, He'd drafted you into helping fix up more eggs for the holiday. When the Guardians agreed that Pitch could help too, that was the only reason you needed to accept. He had been similarly enthused, though after Bunny had twice used the crystal to subdue him already, he’d just settled for silent work. Bunny was satisfied, at the very least.

“What about you, Boogeyman?” he asks Pitch. “How’d your Easters usually go?”

There’s a long pause, and he starts to repeat his question when Pitch answers, “I don’t believe the Golden Age had ‘Easter’ so much as the different planets and constellations had certain times of their years where they celebrated new life and renewal.” Each word comes out slow and calculated. “I could be mistaken about that, however, given that most of my memory of the time is either gone or still behind thick shadows. Since you were also there, you could tell me better.”

“You don’t remember anything? Any sort of celebration with your wife and daughter?” you press. You've been trying to get him to talk about them; when he inadvertently mentions them, he goes silent, and then pivots to another subject. You hate to see him so bothered. He simply looks at you and starts to reach out, but he stops himself when Bunny not-so-subtly places his paw over the control crystal. Pitch opts to go right back to his brush, leaning against you instead.

“No,” he says. “Nothing.”

“Do you wish you could?” you ask, laying your head on his shoulder.

He doesn’t answer for a long time, just sitting there with his brush and the egg, not moving a single bit. His eyes are far away, flickering over something you can’t see. You’ve tried subtly letting him know you can’t read his mind, but nothing prompts him to share. It’s bewildering and frustrating, but you don’t feel like you have any right to pry. You set your supplies down and gently hold his wrist. He blinks, but still says nothing, a frown becoming even more pronounced on his face. You lean up and kiss his temple, ignoring the sharp “Watch it!” from Bunny. At the touch, Pitch inhales and comes back to himself.

“No,” he finally says. “They hold no sway over my thoughts.”

When you reach over and curl your fingers through his, you hear Bunny huff, but he doesn’t bind Pitch again.

*************

The Cossack wears a firm frown as he leads Pitch to a quiet, open area. It’s just him, Pitch, and one or two yetis. Pitch is on edge, wishing that at least one more Guardian were here to keep watch. Even the rabbit. The Cossack finally stops, turns on his heel, and dramatically removes his overcoat in one swift motion.

“Uhm…” Pitch starts to back up, but one of the yetis holds him by his shoulders. The Cossack starts approaching him, taking two cutlasses as they’re offered by another yeti. “H-Hang on, now! We have an agreement!”

“Yes, we do. Part of agreement is to help fight against shadows,” he answers. He motions to the yeti, and a thick, furry arm holds the point of a rapier to Pitch’s chest. After a second, the yeti smirks and flips the blade around, offering the handle. Pitch looks at the sword, then to the Cossack, who is glaring at him from fifteen feet away and brandishing his cutlasses.

“I… do not recall that specific part of the truce…”

“But you want revenge, yes?” The Cossack’s eyes twinkle. He gestures for Pitch to take the rapier again. “You want to destroy shadows who hurt you, abandoned you, ya?” He takes on a darker look as he says, “You want to get them for what they did to your spirit?”

Pitch yanks himself out of yeti’s grasp and snatches the rapier, slowly swinging it to check its weight. It’s been a long while since he’d favored a blade. Not too long after he’d crashed to this planet, he’d taken to using the shadows themselves, whipping out the shadow scythe when he was feeling particularly cocky. This rapier is very simple, easy enough to handle. An old instinct—probably from his years as General Kozmotis Pitchiner—finds the grip familiar. Pitch holds the sword down at an angle, facing the Cossack, who grins.

“I have already killed fearlings that dared threaten them, and I’ll do it again,” Pitch growls. He looks at the weapon in his hand. “I hope you don’t regret giving me this.”

The Cossack cheerfully holds up the crystal. “I think I am in control here.” He pockets it and holds his swords at the ready. “But first, small test.”

He lunges forward, crying out and swinging his swords. Pitch sidesteps, holding the rapier out in front of him. The Cossack whirls around, slashing downward. Pitch deflects as he tries to get out of range again, searching for an opening. It comes just as the large man closes the distance, dancing with his blades so that he gets dangerously close to slicing through Pitch’s neck. Pitch takes the chance and thrusts up, the tip of the rapier nearly cutting through his shirt to his chest. They both pause, blades tense where they sit micrometers from piercing skin.

“Very nice. You have good control, despite everything.”

The cutlasses press against the juncture of his neck and shoulder for a second before the Cossack completely draws back and hands them off to the yeti. Pitch straightens up and is relieved of his weapon as well.

“I still do not completely trust you, Pitch.”

“That’s all right.”

“But I have seen Sandy and Jack, and of course spirit, interact with you. So I’m having sympathy, if not trust.”

“All right…”

“I am thinking you could be good man if you try harder. Manny believes in you, at least.” He points up through a window, and the full moon shines down. Pitch feels the moonbeams swipe over him, and he shivers. He’d rather it be Selene spying upon and condescending to him. She is at least mostly unconcerned with his struggles. The Man in the Moon’s presence so thoroughly exposes him that it makes him nauseous. The large man approaches Pitch and continues, “I think I believe in you, too.”

“Despite not trusting me?” Pitch says

“I was once Cossack thief. Life of crime was everything to me, whole identity. I could not imagine being anything except fearless leader of greatest band of thieves who stole half of continent’s wealth and gambled it away in a week. And then…” He once again points to the moon. “Manny saw something in me—small center of self—that he knew could help set world right. Were not for Manny, we would have killed you in your lair that day; so perhaps he is seeing something similar in you? And if he believes, so do I.”

“But you don’t trust.”

“You make it difficult. Lack of trust and belief in you are not mutually exclusive, however.” He pats Pitch on the shoulder with a forceful slap. Pitch bites back the pain, wincing. He recovers right as the Cossack takes up his swords again, the yeti offering the rapier. “One more thing: you will call me ‘North.’ It is my name, and it is only respectful.”

“Sure, sure—“

Before Pitch can get a proper hold on the rapier, the Cossack is holding his swords like a giant pair of scissors to his neck.

“I reiterate: you _will_ call me by name. _It is respectful.”_

“I understand,” Pitch says, trying not to swallow with the blades once again so close to cutting his throat. “I fully understand… North.”

He backs off his cutlasses and continues to jab and slash at Pitch for the next few hours. Pitch is still rusty with the swordplay by the end of it, and can’t hope to overpower the master swordsman, but it feels like a few more shadows uncloud from parts of his mind. That makes the whole ordeal familiar enough to pick up again, if not remember in whole. Besides, if this will be a key to making sure the shadows never touch the spirit again, then so be it.


	35. Final Preparations

About ten small fairies dart down the tall shelves, slapping stickers on all of the tooth boxes that they're going to move. You grab the cylindrical containers, one after the other, on all of the shelves within your reach. A yeti follows behind, removing the rest from the higher shelves. You toss them into the bag you’re carrying, wincing every time you hear them _clank_ against each other. Toothiana assures you the boxes are almost indestructible, but you’re hesitant to throw them in without care.

This is how your month has been going: jumping between tight locations to help prep for the equinox, going through magic boot camp, and very occasionally finding quiet time with Pitch. The stress makeouts are folded in there, too, but it feels paradoxically less intimate than when the tips of your fingers happen to brush over each other’s, or when you catch him gazing at you silently and intensely. He's withdrawn so much, and you've taken to grinding your teeth and repeating _It's just stress. It's just stress. He'll be better after the equinox and Easter. It's. Just. Stress._ Toothiana hovers around the corner, rubbing her eyes and yawning. She nearly bumps into the shelf, saved only by a pack of fairies that gently redirect her.

“Hey,” you say. “Good sleep?”

She snaps awake, her eyes flickering wildly until she rests on you. “I’m a little out of practice, so I feel worse than before I dunked my head in the dreamsand.”

She stretches and shakes herself out. Her feathers rise and fall like fluffy scales, knocking loose some leftover, inert dreamsand. It’s completely lost its luster, and it dissipates almost as soon as it hits the floor. Toothiana pauses and stares into the distance for a second before summoning a few more fairies and handing out tooth-gathering assignments. She does look a little worse for wear, though the dark circles under her eyes are still nothing compared to Jack’s. He’s getting the telltale raccoon face of exhaustion as the deadline looms ever closer, especially with his home still compromised. They’ve all started taking turns to sleep just to keep the high-energy planning going, and while it usually wouldn’t strictly be necessary to sleep—as it hasn’t been for any of them since they were turned into spirits—exhaustion is still a hurdle. A low hurdle, but at the rate they’ve all been moving, it’s as high as the mountain peak the Tooth Palace sits on.

You toss a few more tooth boxes into your sack and tie it off. You call to a yeti, and they catch the sack as you toss it, jogging off to put it in the piles for moving. Toothiana watches the assembly-line muddle onward and hugs her arms around herself.

“I don’t like this.”

“I know,” you say. “But what else can we do with so little time?”

She shakes her head. “Bunny’s right. Mitigating harm through number games is gross and wrong. I’m going to lose so many of them…” She reaches out and runs her fingers over the non-tagged boxes. They gleam at her touch, a bit of the light of their memories peeking through the seams of the closures.

“You could win some back, couldn’t you?”

“Maybe, but it wouldn’t last too long. Usually once a child stops believing, it’s a slippery slope to cynicism and ‘realism’ from there. The other Guardians will feel it, too. And since Jack’s guarding this place while North and I go out tooth collecting, I’m worried he’ll have trouble if too many drop their belief at once.”

“He should be fine. This isn’t about fighting the fearlings.”

“‘Should’ is a really key word,” she replies. “I ‘should’ be ramping up collections and gifts in tandem with Easter to boost belief that way, but instead I’m doing triage.”

You just stand there, not knowing what to say, so you draw out another bag and keep clearing off that shelf. It’s tedious enough work to distract you from the thoughts racing through your head. From the spire on Thera to the dense passages in the book to Pitch growing increasingly quiet and furiously passionate as the month wears on. He, too, has been more and more exhausted, and contact with you has helped only so much. But he refuses to say what’s bothering him, if there’s anything wrong at all, and you're reaching the end of your rope.

 _Says the liar,_ the nasty part of your mind spits. _Says the one who drove your spouse and their_ actual _true love apart. You have no right to pry._

You shake your head so violently to banish the thought that you end up swinging right into the shelf. Stars burst across your eyes and the pain pulses in a single, sharp point on the crown of your head, and you hiss.

“You okay?” Toothiana is still there it turns out, and she sees you wipe out. You rub your head a few more times to take the sting out.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just had some terrible thoughts for a second.” You force a chuckle and a smile. “That showed them, I guess.”

“If you ever need to talk about anything, you’re welcome here.”

“Despite everything?”

Your past had fully trickled out to the others over the last week or so. Bunny isn’t thrilled, though he treats you a lot better than he does Pitch, and possibly even likes you as an acquaintance.

“Despite everything.” Toothiana flits in place, trying to find words for something. “Look, it really is easier to… maybe not forgive you? But see that the one horrible thing doesn’t have to define you? And you’re working to make up for it. No offense, but Pitch—” She holds out her arms to settle you before you snap at her. “—he’s been causing chaos and harm for so long that it would take at least twice the amount of years he was evil to make up for everything. Several thousand years. Times two.”

“Well...” It’s your turn to find the least offense, least hostile way to phrase your thoughts. “He’s been doing good so far, and he’ll be putting his own ass on the line covering you and North in a few days. His own, de-powered self as the only thing between you and any shadows that get itchy.”

“Really wish he could just stay in his cage,” she mutters.

“He could help Jack.”

“No.”

“Well, Bunny doesn’t want him near the tunnels, either. I’m with Katherine and Sandy to catalyze dreams and stories together, you need backup, and he is still the expert on fearlings and darkness here.”

You start throwing boxes into your bag as you speak, not caring about how delicate they might be right now. The Guardians, for all the freedoms they give you, still technically have you as a prisoner. Still have you as an involuntary cog in their plans, even if you want to do right by the world. The mark on your neck itches where the fearlings had scratched it in Greece. You shiver as the feeling zips across both your shoulders before fading. Once you look up again, Toothiana’s rounding the corner to the aisle, carrying a box. You hold out your hand for it, but just as you’re about to toss it in with the others, she stops you.

“It’s Alisah’s,” she says, turning the box. Sure enough, the profile image on the end is your great-granddaughter. You drop the sack and hold the box like it might break in your hands.

“She’s still under ten. Her memories will be okay, won’t they?.”

“So you _do_ understand why this is upsetting me.”

You hold her memories to your chest. “Yeah,” you manage. “Yeah.”

Toothiana gently grabs your hand and wedges the box from your fingers. She brushes her fingers over the top, and it opens, soft light emanating from it. It’s an incomplete set of teeth; by the time Alisah’s twelve, all the missing spaces should fill in. Only three more years of important memories to make and carry for a lifetime. Toothiana pulls your other hand over and tells you to summon your magic. Once there’s an iridescent blob on your finger, she lightly presses it down into the box until it catches and starts spreading. She closes the box and uses her own magic to activate it. It shimmers with a calming light, a lazy crackle of your magic swirling through it.

“That should tide her over until we’re done with Easter,” she says. “Then we can have you meet properly. And your son!”

She hands you the box back, and you carefully place it in the sack with the others, heart wrenching as the pile shifts and Alisah’s picture disappears. Not too much longer. But also too soon. You have no idea how to even begin apologizing to Jordan for everything.

A little bit of dreamsand falls from Toothiana onto you as she stretches and ruffles her feathers again. It’s still got a bit of glow to it, though it’s fading fast. You summon a bit of magic and the grains immediately pull towards it, flashing for a moment before settling into the pool of oily black. You release the grains, letting them fall into your open hand. Immediately, the muscles in your arm start to feel heavy, but not so much that you’re ready to collapse. It’s a simple trick, one you had discovered rather quickly once you started collecting the substances. Enough of them stay magically charged long enough for you to study and distill, but a few—the dreamsand and black sand especially—fade almost as soon as they’re cut off from the source. The time you have varies depending on how dense the sand is, but the fact remains that it’ll dissipate quickly.

Like so many other things, you discovered you could prolong its power by accident, tripping headfirst into a whole pile while attempting to inject your own magic into it. Once you’d woken from your spill, you’d found a glob of it still glowing.

“Hey, Toothiana?” She leans back over to you. “I think I may have a way to give Jack and the others some backup for the mission.”

*************

It’s less than one week until the equinox, and Pitch watches the spirit demonstrate how they preserve the dreamsand. They’re eager enough to share their findings, though he wonders exactly how all right they’d be providing said service to this organization due to their past. The Guardians have been thinking it might be useful for something beyond defensive reserves.

There’s barely any more time until the operation begins, and everyone has started to reach their breaking points. The Guardians snap at each other for things they wholeheartedly agree about. Snap at Pitch for the smallest bit of cheek. They’re still moving sack after sack of tooth boxes, working themselves to the point of collapse. They’ve even started getting snippy with the spirit, and he has to hold himself back furiously every time they do so in front of him.

He’s trying equally as hard to keep himself level with the spirit, despite how hot and cold they can be. He doesn’t think they’re doing it on purpose, but it’s frustrating to have them up against him, their want and passion palpable, only for them to suddenly cut themself off. They can turn on a dime, and he wants to give them room to sort themself out, but he can’t tell what they want from him anymore.

 _Exhaustion. It’s just exhaustion. It_ has _to be mere exhaustion that’s getting them so worked up._ He still cares deeply for them, will do anything for them.

Theoretically, the mission should go well, with little to no pushback from the fearlings or Nightmare Men.

Theoretically.

Pitch watches the spirit gently nudge Kidra out of the way. As grateful as he is that Kidra is so loyal to them, the spirit’s pet will protect them only so much. Last Halloween showed how delicate they can be. He won’t be there beside them to make sure they’re safe, to slice apart any shadow that dared try to grab them, to… His gaze flicks across the mark, the lens.

Pitch leans over to Jack and whispers, “I need help. Please.”

Jack, Sanderson, and North grant him an audience later that day, dragging him to a dusty, ill-used storage room where the knickknacks have faded from the one window. He looks between them, knowing that he’s asking a lot; he also plans to give up a lot in return. He tries to find a speech or sharp, biting words to spar with. They fail him.

“I would like to request one bit of time with the spirit before we do this,” he says. “No chaperone. Just the two of us for my agreed eight hours.”

The three of them sigh.

“Can’t say we haven’t been expecting this,” Jack says. The other two murmur in agreement.

“Before you say no—” Pitch starts.

“No!” they say at the same time. Pitch grits his teeth.

“—I literally just want _one_ stretch of time with them before we dive headfirst into danger. There’s a chance the fearlings will attack, and they’re far stronger now. If… if something goes wrong…”

He clenches his fists together, wishing he could melt into the shadows. It’s too bright; he’s too exposed. He doesn’t dare look at them in the eye, can’t look them in the eye, but he’s telling too much with his lack of words if he can’t. He feels cut off more than ever, unable to read their emotions. Sanderson floats over to him.

“It’s not that we don’t sympathize, but an agreement is an agreement.”

“Part of this agreement was the ability to petition for more privileges and independence should I prove myself!”

North crosses his arms. “What makes you think you are now worthy?”

“I have endured that rabbit’s grudge with more grace than I have ever given anyone,” Pitch spits. “I have adjusted myself and bit my tongue to fit your expectations of manners. I have done nothing day in and day out but strip away the foundations of my only purpose in life for the sake of revenge. I have pulled myself apart so thoroughly—” He takes a deep breath to stop himself from crying in front of them. “—that I’m not sure I know who I am anymore. I’m not the boogeyman. I’m not some glorious Golden Age hero. I’m no threat. I’m nothing.”

The room flares with light, and they all look to where the moon streams in from the windows. The Man in the Moon has joined them. Pitch recoils. Moonbeams flit through the window that North opens, swirling around the room and relaying a message from the him.

“The Man in the Moon has had to watch Pitch Black torture and be tortured over the centuries. Yet, he never gave up on his capacity for good. Though he suspected, he, too, hadn’t realized that Kozmotis Pitchiner was almost wiped away from Pitch Black’s being. However, the Moon always sought to spare Pitch Black in the hopes he would realize how far he had fallen. Perhaps it was unwavering nostalgia, perhaps it was a childish longing for justice.

But the Man in the Moon’s parents had named Kozmotis Pitchiner his godfather for a reason.”

There’s split-second, eternal pause, and then, _“Excuse me?!”_

Jack, North, and even Sanderson gape at the moonbeams and at the Moon himself in disbelief. Pitch reels from the revelation, suddenly feeling a hundred times as exhausted. Godfather. To one of his most frequent and harrowing enemies. Well, it explained why it always felt like the Moon was watching him closely, besides to keep track of his exploits. The weight of Kozmotis Pitchiner hangs around his neck, a leaden yoke growing denser and heavier by the moment.

The moonbeams continue, “The Moon took pity on Pitch two months ago, when the shadows rejected him finally. It was a last-minute decision to tell the Guardians to spare him one more time instead of returning his due unto him, and he is relieved that his sentimentality has paid off. But now that he feels a debt is repaid, it all falls to Pitch to see it through. To become more than ‘nothing’ in everyone’s eyes, including his own.”

The moonbeams fade, their message sent, their counsel given. The three Guardians and Pitch stand in silence. The phantom echo of the news still reverberates in the air, plucking taut strings between them all. Pitch still feels a slight disconnect, as if his mind is slightly to the side of where it had been before. Regardless, he’s still no longer the indisputable hero; he’s still no longer the most dire villain. “Godfather” is hardly a title with inherent purpose, and the Man in the Moon has long grown up. Jack suddenly bursts out laughing, startling the rest, and he shakes so hard he has to dig his staff into the floor for support.

“What is so funny, Jack?” North says. The boy manages to slow down after a few deep breaths and wiping tears away, but he’s still vibrating in mirth.

“He’s Manny’s godfather,” he starts. “A godparent is supposed to take care of a kid should something happen to their parents…” The joy is nearly sucked out of the conversation altogether, and Pitch looks away from where the Moon hangs in the sky. That’s not a subject he wants to explore at this moment. Jack recovers, as does his humor. “Anyway, since Manny was orphaned, that means that technically, his new parental figure was Pitch. And another—” He can barely hold back a snort. “Another word for parental figure…”

North’s eyes go wide and he bursts into full-bellied laughter, doubling over and slapping his knee. Sanderson isn’t too far behind, quietly shaking with enough laughter to scatter the loose dreamsand caught in his hair all over the place. Jack manages to open one, tear-filled eye to Pitch.

He squeaks, “Another word for parental figure—”

 _Wait. No. Oh, no, no, no._ Pitch realizes too late and tries to stop Jack by choking out, “Don’t say it, please don’t say it.”

“—is ‘guardian!’”

Pitch covers his face with his hands, wondering if he should jump headfirst into the nearest, darkest corner. Not so much to attempt to hide in the shadows, but to knock himself out so he won’t have to face this ridicule. The three of them spend the next few minutes alternating between laughing and wheezing, occasionally getting enough of a grip on themselves to point to him and blabber something about guardianship. Eventually, they slow down and manage to work themselves back into the semblance of professionals.

“Well,” Pitch says. “This has been a hell of a conversation that has gone in every conceivable and inconceivable direction except for the one I want it to. But about the _actual_ reason I asked you here...”

“Say it,” Jack says, smirking. “Say it out loud, and we’ll consider your request.”

North and Sanderson turn to him, waiting. Pitch sighs. “I am… _only technically,_ the… the Man in the Moon’s…” They lean in, grinning like madmen. “Guardian.”

They fall back into howls of laughter. Pitch feels heat rise all over his body, but he digs in. He has no leverage, only sheer determination to see this through.

“One. Single. Stretch. Of time. Alone with them. Toss me back into the cage, let me see nothing but prison and planning for a week after—a month! Eight hours is all I ask. Eight measly hours with them.” He thinks for a moment. “And for them to receive some sort of weapon to defend themself with on the excursion. They favor the bow.”

The three wrestle their laughter under control. A silent conversation seemingly passes between them as they look at each other, then to the Moon again.

“Weapon we can do, one-hundred percent,” North finally says. “And if you are determined to bargain time, then how about table and cage only between equinox and Easter? Two weeks.”

“That’s probably the shortest amount of time the others will agree to,” Sanderson adds. “Even with Manny’s counsel just now.”

Two weeks of nothing but a golden prison and further undoing his handiwork. Such a long, arduous time. But the spirit is smiling now. They’re active, learning, inquiring. Still withdrawn, still overwhelmed in the larger group, but they’re hardly the same person he met a year ago. And, in his opinion, it’s far better for them. North holds out his hand.

“Two weeks.” Pitch takes it. They share a firm handshake, without any posturing this time. Suddenly, the grip does tighten, and North drags him into a rib-crushing hug, laughing loudly.

“Welcome to guardians, lost little shadow!” North roars. “Once you pay penance, maybe we have official ceremony.”

Pitch tries to squirm his way out of the grasp, but Sanderson activates the manacles, and he’s subjected to pokes and prods and bullying. There’s no way they’re ever going to let this go, not in any of their immortal lifetimes. He’s beginning to think they’re getting used to him. Worse, he thinks he’s getting used to them in turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> of all the canonical factoids the books offer, one of the most bizarre and least explored is the fact that pitch is mim's godfather. book five is wild


	36. A Center

It starts to snow as the sun sets, small flurries tapping against your window and creating crystalline patterns that still continue to mystify you. You’d thought spending a lot of time around the stuff would have gotten old, but snow still manages to capture your attention whenever it demands it. You watch the flakes dance in the wind, taking a break from dredging through the book yet again. It’s almost doubled in size with all the bookmarks you’ve stuck between the pages, and you practically have a whole manuscript of notes written. Wrapping the comforter around you, you lean back, carefully turning to sip some cocoa without risking the pages. Kidra shifts so that their head lays against your side, and they huff in contentment.

North knocks on your door, the heavy, insistent boom making you jump and nearly spill your drink all over yourself and Kidra. After your heart attack subsides, you quickly mark your place and haul yourself over to the door. You see Pitch as soon as it swings open, in all of his recalcitrant compliance. You hadn’t realized it was that time already, but who are you to complain? North slips past him just inside the doorway.

“Delivery,” he says. You smile. He then holds out his hand. “I will need book and notes for now, however.”

Your stomach runs cold, and a thousand possible ways you’ve offended Katherine spring to mind. You leap from one to the other, trying to suss out the root cause, starting to spiral with exponential speed. Pitch reaches out and gently places his hand on your arm.

“Just for now. Just until our time is up.”

“I could leave it here while we go somewhere else.”

Pitch flushes and North chuckles behind him. “I think you will be wanting to stay here,” he says, holding out his hand again. Slowly, reluctantly, you place it in his hand. He nods to you, and then calls for Kidra. They flicker their ears over to him, but don’t take more than three steps forward. “I suppose you must be person to tell them to guard door.”

“I… I don’t understand what’s going on. Why?”

Pitch laces his fingers through yours. “We’ve been granted today alone together. No chaperone.”

"With caveat." North motions to Pitch's manacles, which have a few new crystals hastily set into them. "You leave here, we will know and investigate to make sure you aren't up to no good."

"Regardless," Pitch says, flushing even deeper, "It's to be just you and I for now."

The weight of his words, of his voice, of his gaze sinks into you. You’re almost too surprised to react beyond your mouth gaping open. He squeezes your hand. You whistle to Kidra, and they follow North to the door, plopping themself down just over the threshold and curling up, becoming a mountainous blockade. Pitch closes the door, curls his arm around your waist, and whispers your name against your ear.

You run your finger over the crystal on his neck. This setup doesn't sit right with you. “No, really, how did you convince them to do this?”

“I… We won’t be seeing each other like this until the new moon before Easter, during the defense operation, if even that. We’ll cross paths at the equinox, but I’ll be in my cell after that.” He looks a little guilty. “I’m sorry to spring that on you, but I wanted us to have just one swath of time alone together before all of this really kicks off. Before we head into potential danger. I know you can handle yourself, but—”

“But you thought not seeing you at all after going through that would be worth it?!”

Is this really what he’d been thinking about over the last few weeks? One day, and then nothing? You bring your fingers to your temples, rubbing circles there, trying to follow the logic, follow the reasoning of why he decided this without asking. You’ve been trying not to pry, but… He says your name quietly, moving his arms to hold your wrists. He’s so close, and between him, you’re frustration, and the locked door you once again can’t leave for long hours at a time, you’re starting to drop into anxiety.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll—I’ll be fine…” You slip out of his grasp and wander over to the window, opening it for fresh air.

*************

The spirit wrenches themself out of his arms, thrusting the window open. He remains in the middle of the room, mostly confused, but with mounting irritation. He hadn’t anticipated this. Nothing they’ve done over the course of the last month indicated they might have objections to this kind of gesture.

 _Well, almost nothing,_ he thinks.

They stay by the window for the next few minutes, not even looking at him. Not knowing what else to do, he turns and heads for the door. Just as he reaches for the handle, they cry out, “No! You don’t have to leave, I’ll be all right soon.”

He takes a deep breath and swivels around. “Please stop doing that.”

The spirit’s eyes go wide, shocked. “Do what? Asking for you to stay while I calm down?”

“One moment, you want nothing more than to be with me, kiss me, tease me. And the next, you’re pulling away, acting as if there was nothing happening. What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me what’s wrong with you. I can’t read your mind, so I had no idea you were cooking this up.”

“That may be the point of a surprise, darling.”

“Surprises don’t always agree with me…” They shake their head and take a step forward. “I don’t know if I’d’ve agreed with you that this is a worthwhile trade-off, if you’d told me what you were thinking of. I... I…” They stumble over their words, their mouth screwing up.

 _I love you,_ Pitch urges them silently.

“I care so much for you, and I want to see you as often as I can. For that matter, being able to see you in the light has been one of my favorite things since coming here. I can’t see you if you’re in a cell.”

“But that’s why I thought this would be nice. There’s so much I want to say to you, if only we could be completely candid.” He takes a step away from the door. “With a chaperone barely ten yards away at all times, however, I don’t feel like I can be completely honest. I risk being manhandled and dragged away like before.”

“I wouldn’t let them take you again. I already said that.”

“I know, but… Darling, I’m just confused by you. You’re passion, your lust, I can feel that! I may not be an empath by any means anymore, but I can tell what you want when you go for it.” Another step. “But then you pull back, and I’m left wondering if I’ve done something to make you not trust me, to make you hesitant about me now. To make you scared of me.”

He’s shaking. He rubs his eyes and looks at them. They’ve gone pale, one hand over their mouth, their eyes glimmering with tears. They hug themself with their other arm.

“I didn’t…” they start. “I didn’t mean to…”

*************

You’ve done it again. How did this happen again. How many times must you mess up like this before you realize how to avoid it? He feels tricked. You’ve led him on. He looks deflated, devastated. But another part of you screams in frustration.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” you say carefully. “I just didn’t want to smother you, to act like I own you. You’re someone, and I’m someone. I didn’t… Truthfully, I was trying to do the opposite.” You take two steps towards him, holding your arms out pleadingly. “I wanted to give you space so that you could figure things out. You’ve learned so much about yourself recently, and I kind of felt like you wanted time to go over the fact you had a family? You’ve been distant. Here one moment, locked in a memory the next, I thought.”

“My previous family is gone,” he whispers. “Even if I could remember most of who they were, they’re meaningless in the grand scheme of things. You—”

“I feel like I could become just as meaningless if something happened to you.” The tears fall now. “If the shadows take you again, what happens to this last year? To us?”

He gapes, speechless. He blinks and looks to the side, trying to form words. “I… I wanted you to know how important you are to me. How I’m not going to get hung up on my past. A past that, once again, I can’t remember ever having.”

“From what you do remember, it couldn’t’ve been that bad, could it? So much that you would rather it have never happened?”

He shifts his weight from foot to foot. “No. The one, full memory I have is nothing but domestic bliss. But again that was so, so long ago, and they’re not relevant anymore. I swear I’m not consumed by thoughts of them. Of her.”

“I, of all people, should know better than to be judgy about past loves.” You shift forward again. “Why didn’t you tell me you felt this way about them? I just want you to be all right and to feel comfortable.”

“And I want you to be happy. You look so wonderful here: happy, smiling, so enthusiastic about your studies. Perhaps I didn’t want to weigh you down with my heavy yet utterly empty baggage.”

He takes a step forward, and you’re barely ten feet apart again. “So, you’d just take on all mine instead?”

“I’ll do anything for you.”

“But what about you? What do you want?” You shrug. “I can’t fix what I don’t know about, and it seems like there’s a lot you’re not telling me. And I want to help any way I can.”

This is twice. Twice you’ve mangled your way into someone’s life like this. It’s not fair. This isn’t fair. He closes the gap, tentatively placing his hand on your arm. The coolness of his skin focuses your racing thoughts a bit, but you don’t look him in the eyes. He holds your chin, but you fight against it when he tries to lift your face up. He settles for laying his hands on your shoulders.

*************

This has gone all sorts of belly-up. He hadn’t realized his bouts of contemplation were affecting them this way. But he doesn’t want to bother them with his past. But he’s thinking it, in fact, might not be so bothersome to them. It’s true, they’re hardly the person to judge a past relationship, especially the way their marriage formed. This means something to them, insofar as he’s in the middle of it. He opens his mouth to speak, but they cut him off.

“I’m sorry,” they say. “I’ve been so frustrated lately, so into my studies and the plans. I’m sorry I didn’t pick up on the back and forth I was doing.” They finally look at him. “I promise you, I want to be with you. I do! But I don’t think I could live with myself if you felt obligated to be with me.”

“It is _never_ an obligation.” He grasps the side of their face. They reach up to his elbows. “I’ve told you in exact words, several times, how I feel about you. You don’t want to hear them right now, but they haven’t changed.

“But, perhaps I _was_ a little hasty in making this deal on my own.” He rubs his thumb around the edge of the lens. “I fell into the same trap the Guardians did by not telling you about the negotiations.”

“I’m scared.”

“Of me?”

“No. For you. About the equinox.”

They let him place his forehead against theirs, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. Slowly, they reach up and cross their hands around his neck, pulling closer. As they stand in the middle of the room, the atmosphere changes. Pitch tentatively puts a hand on their waist. They glance at it, but don’t object. He pulls them flush against his body and sways gently with them in his arms.

“I’m scared, too,” he finally confesses. “That’s why I wanted this. Just some time alone, where we could drop our inhibitions and do whatever we wanted.”

“I guess we should work on talking like this more,” they say. “Because this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever argued about, and me and my partner used to get into some doozies.”

“If it’s been bothering us, it’s not a stupid topic. Maybe tedious, but I’d rather resolve a shallow problem than lose you.” He purses his lips. “That being said, I know you loved them, but it still… How should I say this?” He takes a deep breath. Another. A third. “I’m jealous of the way you speak about them. Your former spouse.”

They pull back, but only enough to look at him. His stomach clenches when they make eye contact, still so undone by their gaze. He just wants to fold them against himself, to never let go. _In time, in time._ Their conversation has swerved toward the calmer end.

“Jealous? Of a long-dead person?”

“You have nothing but praise for their memory, and it clearly eats at you. Even back when I could read your fear, you were always so attached to them. Simultaneously in unabashed love, yet nervous to be in that love. I suppose I understand why, now.” Their fingers brush against his hair. His hand at their waist clenches. “But to know that they still have such sway over you… I want that. I want to be the one eating at your thoughts, the only thing you can bear to think about. I want to know that I have you in my life.”

“Is that why you’re trying to forget about your Golden Age family? Because you think I wouldn’t believe that you want me?”

He whispers, “Maybe.”

“Koz.” He nearly dives into them when they say his name. “I just said that I wouldn’t have the ground to judge you about that.” They press close to him. “Please, please don’t let me stop you from doing anything you want to do. Ever.”

They stand at an impasse. They stand on better-understood ground. They stand, merely holding each other, listening to the each others’ breaths leaving their lungs, one after the other. He reaches up to curl his finger into a lock of their soft hair, and they press his knuckles against their cheek.

“This isn’t how I wanted this to happen,” they say. “I wanted our first day alone together to be peaceful and happy and—” The glance at their bed. “I don’t want you to go away again. Not so soon.”

“It’s just between the equinox and the new moon before Easter.” He nuzzles against their forehead. “Two weeks.”

“It was about two weeks from waking up here to seeing you again in the first place.” They massage his hand in theirs. Every finger is given delicate attention, their hands curling and dancing over it with whisper-light touches. They move up his wrist, and then pull it to their mouth to kiss. His breathing picks up. “It felt so much longer.”

“I’m sorry. But don’t know if I can change this now.” From the other side of the door, Kidra shifts a little, thumping against the wood. “I think we’re to see this time through.”

The spirit takes his face in theirs, a terrible, sad look on their face. They draw him in again, furiously pushing their lips against his so hard, so direct, so passionate that a jolt of arousal flashes through him. They grind against him, pushing him backwards until his back hits the wall. He gasps, feeling teeth grazing against his neck, a tongue chasing that sensation. He bunches the back of their shirt in his fists, yanking it up, desperately holding the small of their back and digging his nails into their skin. They moan at the light scratches, panting against the scar on his neck. The spirit, pupils blown out, licks their lips and trails their gaze up and down over him.

“I wish this had gone differently. But if this is it, let’s not waste our time.”


	37. Above and Under

You have him. He has you. Eight hours. More than enough time. A mere blip in the grand scheme of the eternity you’re cursed with. You can feel his dick against your pelvis already, twitching in anticipation, hear his breathing as it slips more and more out of his control. And your own, catching in your throat as your body warms and shivers when you lock eyes with him. He may be the one who melts at that sort of thing, but in this moment, you fully understand the draw.

“Don’t leave,” he whispers. “Don’t pull away. Please stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere right now, Koz. So long as you want me.”

You both move at the same time, hands bumping each other as they move in mirror sync. You bash your nose against his chin. He clips your forehead with his teeth. Your fingers tangle in his billowy sleeves. He tries to rip your shirt up and gets caught on your cloak. You stand on tiptoe, on one leg to reach as close as possible, and he leans down, shifting so that his weight falls over you. It happens in barely a second, and you both bounce from the wall, stumbling a few steps until you fall sideways onto the bed.

He chuckles, and you take the opportunity to straddle him with a deep grind and a bite to his bottom lip. He groans loudly, hands running up your torso, down your thighs, his fingers trying to find purchase on your clothing to yank them off. Throughout it all, you can feel him trembling against you. Or perhaps it’s your own shaking limbs reverberating through him. You grind down again. He claws at the clasp of your cloak, fighting against it, grunting as it resists his furious tugs. The seams around it pop a few threads, and he removes his hands. He flexes them a few times, panting.

“Just go for it,” you say, licking his ear. “Worry about it later, just go—”

You barely finish your sentence as he rips the seam apart, gathers the cloak, balls it up, and lobs it away. In response, you fumble your way around the absolute excess of buttons and loops, wondering how the Golden Age could be so advanced, yet couldn’t be bothered to invent zippers. He tries to indicate you to rip it as well, but you refuse on the grounds that he looks way too good in it. It takes time. You have to slow down, much to your frustration. Finally, the robe flings away from his torso, the silky fabric pooling in a beautiful frame around him.

The scars on your back ache in sympathy as you finally see the twisted, shiny scar tissue on his chest from where the creature stabbed him. Streaks of black stain downward, like horrifying birthmarks. Rebirth-marks in this case. You rub your hands over them, and Pitch holds them there for a second, right against his heart.

“Every time I look at you,” he says, pushing your hands deeper into his chest until you can feel the frantic beat. “No matter how tired, how distracted, how calm I seem, I am falling apart inside at the mere sight of you.”

You rub your hand up to his collarbone. “Even after our conversation just now?”

“One single skipped heartbeat is nothing in the grand scheme of things.” He brings your other hand up to his lips. “So long as we can come out of the other end better than before, every conversation is worth it.”

You dive in, licking over his scar, his chest, back up to his lips. He starts chanting your name, and when you move back up to his face, you see tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. For a second, you’re terrified you’d done something to hurt him, but he blinks and rubs your thigh, nodding. He reaches up, hand disappearing behind your head, and you inhale sharply, turning to follow it. You close your eyes in relief as he stops, then drops his hand back onto the bed.

“Sorry, sorry.”

His other hand caresses your face, and you open your eyes. It’s not fair. You want that contact, to feel his grip in your hair again. If you ever see that nightmare creature again, you’ll kill it with your bare hands if that’s what it takes. Heart pounding, you hold his hand on the bed, leaning down until you can kiss him, drawing his tongue into your mouth, sucking hard enough to makes him arch against you. His other hand moves to the hem of your shirt, then up underneath to your breast. As he squeezes and pinches, sending waves of electricity through you, you gaze at him and draw his other hand slowly, slowly, slowly up. You give a small kiss to his palm and then slide it onto the back of your head, looking him straight in the eye.

Immediately, you lock up a bit. Back in the cage. Back in the darkness. Surrounded by nothing. The only tangible feeling coming from the back and forth, draw and slam into the bars. His face, not his face.

Not his face.

Not _his_ face.

The longest ten seconds of your life pass, and you yank the hand away from your head. You double over, head to his chest, panting. It’s not quite as extreme as when you reunited a few weeks ago, but you’re still fighting against the spiral of panic. Pitch takes his hand from your chest and moves it to rub your back.

“Easy, easy…” he says, leaning to press a kiss to the top of your head. “You’re safe here. They can’t harm you. I won’t let them near you ever again.”

You let his voice ground you, calm you in tandem to the gentle touch at your back. He pries his other hand from where you’ve pinned it to the bed, and he starts lifting your shirt from your body with it. As soon as it’s off, you shiver and the tension shakes out of your body. Pitch holds your hips and back, rocking you against him.

“Focus on me. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Neither am I,” you reply. “I just wanted to see if I could replace its cheap replica of your face with the real thing.”

He smiles. “Whatever it takes. However long it takes.”

You lay against him, continuing to drag your pelvis against his as you kiss him yet again. It’s quietly desperate. You’re barely into the first hour of the visitation, and it feels like you’re wasting your time, like it’s moving faster outside of the area where only you and Pitch exist. You can’t stand it anymore.

You rake your teeth over his neck, teasing, promising exactly what you both want. You sneak your hand between the both of you, lifting onto your knees, trailing swirls and light touches down his torso. He gasps, clutching at you, moving back to your breast not only with his hand but with his mouth. You hiss at the warmth, just stopping yourself from closing a fist around his cock. Instead, you pluck at his waistband, dipping your fingers below to run your fingernails around the sensitive skin. He bucks into your hand, begging with his eyes as he laves his tongue over the nipple in his mouth.

You grasp him, and he sighs and groans in relief, growing even harder in your hand. You stroke him, squeezing the base and swiping over the head. Before long, your hand is slick with precome, making your movements faster and faster. He pulls away from you long enough to shove his robe skirts down and free his cock. You squeeze. He arches again, closing his eyes and mouthing, “Please, please, please!”

“Wow,” you say, releasing him. His eyes fly open, but you just lean down to lap at his neck as you push yourself up and drag your pants down and off. “For someone so enthralled with me following orders, you’re not so bad in this position yourself.”

“Truly?” he says, voice quavering. You run your nails over his neck and rock back and forth against him, no clothing to dampen the feeling anymore. “Interestingly, I hadn’t been expecting your little show. Not after you locked your legs around my head in the forest and cursed my name.”

“Is that so, Kozmotis?” you say, dropping your head so that you hiss the final syllable next to his ear.

He shudders and starts thrusting quickly, grabbing your face to look at him directly. You start to meet him thrust for thrust, trying to angle yourself just so, just right… He slips inside, knocking the wind out of you as you stretch around him. Pitch opens his mouth wide, a strangled moan escaping him. There’s a pause as you both get used to each other again, and then you move, lifting yourself off of him a bit and sitting yourself right back down. He picks up the rhythm right away.

“You look amazing like this,” you say, wiping the first beads of sweat from your brow. “I wonder if you’ve done this before, way back when.” You clench around him, and he digs his hands into your hips so hard you can feel the bruises start to rise, as much as you know you’ll be feeling this whole thing long after they take him away again. Leaning down, you nibble and lick at his ear, whispering against it, “I can just imagine it: a glorious general coming back home, exhausted from the front, tired of giving out orders, desperate to have someone else think for him—”

He tightens his grip on your back. “And where the fuck did you learn to speak like that? Surely not from me.”

“I was married for fifteen years. You’d be surprised what I learned in such a short amount of time.”

“Oh, _please_ keep surprising me.”

You curl your fingers through his hair and push his face into you, biting at him, shoving your tongue down his throat and swallowing every whimper, every moan, every delicious sound he makes. It’s not long until you get out of sync, his hips stuttering and slamming up into you, forcing you to release him and gasp for air.

“Look at me,” he begs. “Look at me…”

You close your eyes and lean down to him, slowly reopening them just as you meet his hips. He bucks and freezes under you for a few seconds, so tense he looks like he might snap in half. The tension doesn’t so much leak out of him as it does abandon him all at once, and he lays back down. You rock a few more times, watching him twitch at the contact. You lay against him, licking his neck and kissing every square inch of his face. Once he settles down a bit, he pushes against you, and you slip to his side. You both catch your breath, arms around each other. He shifts and pulls your back against his chest to spoon, draping his leg over yours and resting his hand over one breast, kneading.

“Incredible,” he says against your ear. You smile, satisfied that's he's satisfied. Then he says, "Hm?" and runs his fingers over your shoulder. He shrugs and shakes his head so that it brushes against the back of your head, and the feeling is too much right now. You try to flip over to be nose-to-nose with him, but he holds fast, burying into your hair. You tremble and give a few small pats to his arm, insistently turning over. He relents, but eagerly kisses you once you’re nose-to-nose.

“Give me a few minutes, and then…” He trails his finger down your front, until he reaches the apex of your legs. “I would hate for you to give without receiving.”

“It’s all right.”

“I don’t think so.”

You laugh softly, trying to hide how much you want his fingers between your legs that very second. His eyes shut, sweaty forehead laying against yours. You follow suit, eyes suddenly snapping open a while later. The sun has shifted outside—not too much to be worrisome, but enough to make you realize that you had drifted to sleep for at least forty-five minutes. Maybe an hour and a half. Pitch, for all his years of practiced insomnia, is still asleep against you. With his eyes closed, he looks so peaceful, unbothered by anything, and now that he’s fully in the light, you can take a moment to appreciate his body.

The Golden Age-esque robes tangle around his torso, the skirt hanging down his hips where you can see his chest and stomach expand every time he inhales. Small twitches run up and down his skin, showing off the muscles stringing together his lithe figure. You run your forefinger down his body, from neck to thigh. His breathing immediately changes, and he peeks open one eye, catching you. Before you can stammer something out, he pushes up to his elbow, robe falling off one shoulder. It hides enough of him to be enticing, and exposes enough of him to edge into obscene. You twirl some of the fabric between your fingers as he traces your lips, humming.

“What _do_ you remember about the Golden Age?” you ask.

He blinks a few times, then pulls himself up to sit. Half of his hair slicks awkwardly against his head. Bedhead: the curse of finally having a bed to have your gross, sweaty sex in. He motions for you to lean your head onto his lap, and after a moment of shifting around, you’re looking up at him as he resumes running his fingers across you.

“As I’ve said, there’s not much I can readily remember. Not as Kozmotis Pitchiner, anyway. I managed to retrieve one, full memory from a dream a month ago.” He looks guilty, then shakes his head. “Of my wife and daughter.”

“Tell me about them.”

“My wife was apparently a politician on a planet’s council. Dark hair, gleaming eyes. Witty retorts, if that single memory is anything to go by. An exasperated mother with little help, least of all from me…” He stares into the distance, hands pausing. “Judging from the memory, my daughter was set to look very much like her mother as she grew up. And what a handful she was just in that one moment. Apparently had a habit of slipping out to sail her skiff among the star dust and schools of star fish. Precocious as anything.” His brow furrows in the struggle to remember, but a smile pushes at the corners of his mouth. “That’s all I really know for sure, and even then, I can’t tell what’s merely an amalgamation of facts about them or actual truth.”

“They sound wonderful,” you reply. “You really loved them.”

“It feels like lie,” he whispers. “I can feel my devotion to them, like an instinct, but I can’t remember what, specifically, I loved about them in the first place. They’re just gone.”

“Maybe it’s enough to know that they meant so much to you that even after thousands of years and amnesia, you love them.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think it’ll ever be enough. I’ll always wonder and regret.”

You can understand that. A thousand years from now, you’ll probably still cry over your spouse and son, especially if you never find out where they are. That urge to find Alisah and Jordan ASAP hits you again, a spiral of impulses and hasty planning to keep track of all their descendants following right after. You take a deep breath, hold it, and breathe out slowly, quieting the storm. Instead, you lace your fingers through his and nod in agreement. He leans down and plants a kiss to your forehead, your nose, then your lips.

“Your turn,” he says. “Tell me about your partner and son.”

“I thought you didn’t like hearing about them?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “No. But, I feel as if I should be able to, and to get over myself. Maybe if I learn more about them, I can quell that jealousy.” He caresses your face. “Besides, you like talking about them, and I like hearing you talk.”

A burst of babble spills out of you immediately, and you’re close to tears just as fast as you revisit the memories. How you and your partner missed your PhD ceremony because that was the day Jordan decided to be born. The monthly camping trips that, once or twice, accidentally skipped over to three-day weekends when waking up on Sunday was too difficult. Even though you two didn’t share many professors in school, you still made fun of the little bit of crossover, and perhaps tried to deface their ratings page a few times. Their own success in their field; a party you threw them the first time they were published in a big-name journal. Jordan and his fire, his desire to do everything he thought he could get away with. You partner, how they whispered your name when you were alone. The thousands of dollars spent on babysitters when you two hadn’t gotten enough alone time in three months and spent a week just by yourselves. Their smiles. The myriad of poem drafts you found in your partner’s closet, evidence of the time they took to get the words just right for the one they presented in front of your birthday party—and the limericks they recited to you later that evening.

“I… I miss them so much,” you conclude another hour later. You still haven’t told him a quarter of everything about them. Pitch wipes your tears away and pulls you up so that you’re straddling his lap. He leans into your neck to kiss, avoiding touching the back of your head.

“We’ll find Jordan,” he says. “He can probably tell you where your spouse is buried. Or interred.” He stammers a moment before asking, "You know, I think in the entire year we've known each other, you've never told me their name."

“It hurts to say out loud.”

He wipes away your tears. "I'll be here to help you through the hurt."

You close your eyes, envisioning their face, both before and after the accident. Their smile, their sarcastic smirk, their sleeping face. "Arden," you say, their whole body forming behind your eyes. "Their name was Arden."

The kisses escalate to licking, to light nibbles, to a long bite against the taut vein of your neck that will surely leave a spectacular mark. You whimper and huff, scraping your fingers over his back and shoulders until he reaches back, collects them, and holds them together behind your back. He smiles against your neck before leaving a trail of bites and nips from one shoulder to the other, though he is careful to move around the still-tender black mark. You secretly watch him through the lens, as much as you can, but when he pulls slightly on your arms, leveraging you into an arch, your other eye flies open.

He pauses, saying, “Are you comfortable?”

All you can do is nod, flexing your fingers in his grasp. “Like old times, huh?”

“Just because I’m a connoisseur of pleasure doesn’t mean I don’t have my preferences.” He pulls back a little, the trail he left along your collarbone growing cold in the air. “Though I wonder…” He places his hand over your eyes, both of them, and waits a moment.

“Do you have a surprise for me?” you say. He only chuckles before licking a stripe up your breastbone. The unexpected sensation hits harder than before, as hard as it did back in the forest a year ago when all you could see of him were his—“Oh!” you gasp, realizing.

He laughs again, lifting the hand from your eyes. You make an indignant sound, but he just reaches around as if he’s hugging you. He gently pulls back on your arms, making you arch further, and he leans in to whisper, “Patience, darling, we still have hours to fill.”

He releases you and starts hunting around the room, asking if you happen to have a few scraps of fabric anywhere. You find your old tunic, and after confirming about a dozen times, he rips a strip off. He gently removes your lens, laying a soft kiss to your eyelid, and replaces it with the fabric, wrapping the long strip around enough to block the light while also staying comfortable. Once you’re blindfolded, he slides next to you, running his hands up and down your body and holding you close. You reach for him, gasping at the tickling drag of his lips across your collarbone, in a circle around each nipple, and then down over your core. He teases further down until his hot, shaky breath hovers between your legs. You grab and tangle your fingers in his hair, trying to pull him to you.

“Ah, right.” You can hear his smirk. “I thought I’d forgotten something.”

He pulls away, walking and grabbing something off the floor. He shakes open what you assume is your cloak, making sure to snap the fabric loudly several times. Straddling you again, he forces one arm and then the other behind you, wrapping them together. Your breath picks up, in anticipation of what’s to come and memories of before. He tugs a few times on the wrapping, making sure you can’t escape. Finally, finally, he kneels on the bed, looming over you. His robes shift all the way off, falling next to you on the bed. He hooks an arm around your shoulders and forces your chin up.

“I do hate to hide your gorgeous eyes away.” He drops his voice low, like he did to hide his identity before. “But, something tells me you won’t mind.”

Before you can gasp, he crushes his lips into yours, claiming your mouth so forcefully that you scoot backward until your arms hit the headboard. He mutters an apology before biting into your neck, your breasts, your stomach, nuzzling and licking over every spot before resuming his position between your legs, an iron grip on your hips. A nip to your thigh. A pause. A bite to your other. Back and forth, back and forth, moving closer and closer, deliberately pausing for five or more agonizing seconds between each touch, shivering and laughing louder as you whine and huff and call his name. When you can’t stand it anymore, you try to wrench yourself out of his hold, only managing to free one leg and attempting to hook it around his head.

“Woah!” He catches your calf with his hand again, rubbing circles with his thumb. You thrash your arms against the bindings.

“Koz!” you cry out. “Kozmotis, please—”

“That’s right. Ask nicely,” he says, crawling back up over you. He thrusts his hard cock against your folds. He recaptures your chin and leans down to your ear. “Is this how you like it? Trapped and blind in the assumed care of something unseen?”

You pant. He reaches down to you, running his fingers between your legs, laughing when there’s no resistance, only slickness. He dips his fingertips in a few times—not far enough to mean anything, but more than enough for you to feel it. After a minute of this, he trails a wet finger down your neck and across your chest. You’re panting heavily by now, arms and face trapped, not that you want to go anywhere.

“Well? What say you?”

“Please,” you groan out. “Kozmotis, please…”

“Please what?”

“Your mouth! I need you!”

He slinks back down, presses his tongue to your clit, and licks a slow, hot path up. Your body locks up, pleasure concentrated on that single point, and you can’t even release the scream in your throat. Again. Again. Yet again, and he encompasses it in his mouth, sucking hard. He pulls back for a moment, and you curse. He laughs and goes back, tracing circles and coils around you and on each thigh. It's an agonizing climb before you’re finally at the edge, ready, hoping to spill right over. You pant, trying to tell him, trying to organize the garbled noises stumbling out of your mouth, trying to beg if that’s what it’ll take. He suddenly removes his tongue and replaces it with his fingertips, still slick, and he nuzzles into your stomach.

“Do it,” he whispers hoarsely. The pressure becomes firmer, and the coil in you tightens. “Come for me. Show me.”

The heightened sensations take you over, and you’re thrusting into his hold, grunting and panting, calling out, “Koz! Koz… Koz…” He works you through the orgasm, whispering about everything else he’ll do to you now that he has you bound and alone, promising other things he’ll do once he has you so exposed again in the future. You barely come down from the rush when he’s working you up again, dizzy and needy.

It’s pull and push, thrill and relax, calm and frantic, talk and silence the rest of your time together. Only in the final few minutes do you open the windows to air the room out a bit, the chill wind suddenly reminding you where you are, and why. Even then, until the knock sounds from your door, you and Pitch lay wrapped around each other, content to imagine yourselves in another world, another life, another circumstance.

The first knock warns you. He reluctantly gathers his clothes, and you help button him up, trying to smooth out his hair as much as possible. He briefly turns to the mirror, smiling as he pokes at the hickeys you’ve left with him.

The second knock is a command. You wrap your arms around his waist, and he tilts your face to his one more time. No words. Just the slow morph of his face from smug glee to distant ache.

The third knock immediately precedes the door swinging open. Kidra shoves past Sandy and North, returning to their napping spot next to the window. You brush them with your fingers are they jog by, and then try to beg the Guardians with your eyes alone. They shake their heads, and North holds out his hand for Pitch. No one breaks the viscous silence. You steal one last kiss as he grabs hold of Pitch’s shoulder and directs him out the door. Pitch turns to watch you, stumbling over his feet as he’s led through a portal. You watch the rip in space, trying to track his silhouette until it closes. A minute or so later, North returns, presses Katherine’s book and your notes into your hands, tells you what time he’ll be around to collect you for the operation, and he takes off.

Two weeks, after the equinox. Two lousy, simple weeks and then the new moon. You hug yourself, pressing on the sore bite marks to remind yourself it was real, and that you _will_ see him again.


	38. Tipping the Balance

Finally. The equinox.

The love bites on your neck and arms haven’t yet faded, and you go about your business sans cloak as a way to dare anyone to say anything about it. Granted, you’ve also been wearing it less because it’s been irritating the mark on your neck more than usual. But the silent reminder for others of your steadfast choices is a plus. Bunny avoids looking right at you and acts the least bit huffier when he has to interact with you. Katherine is uncomfortable, but given that you’re part of a group tonight, she at least has the decency to acknowledge you. You’ve been morose since your time with Pitch, but you hold on to the excitement of being able to see him again, even if only for a moment at the rendezvous point.

The last-minute crunch isn’t quite enough to move all the designated teeth, so at least the first half of the operation will see the yetis, Ranconturks, and fairies at the Tooth Palace to finish. They’ll meet up at different checkpoints around the world to give backup. You’re all set by the time they call you to join Katherine and Sandy. You’ve spent the last day or two refining a few things, creating a handful of arrows, and practicing with the bow they gave you. The familiar pull and release hypes you up more than anything for the operation. You’ve never been more ready to encounter a bunch of fearlings. Or better, the Nightmare Man.

Your group begins in Tokyo. As soon as you touch down to the ever-bright metropolis, Katherine and Sandy map out a few saturation points. The first is the real test. Katherine summons the mythosphere; Sandy conjures vast streams of dreamsand. You snap your hands full of iridescence and touch one to the gold, the other to the whispers. For a second, the magic refuses to catch onto either, sticking to your fingers. Your stomach drops a bit.

“Concentrate,” Katherine says at the same time Sandy pats your shoulder and whispers, “You can do this.”

You take a breath so deep that it hurts, and take a minute to release it. As soon as you’ve exhaled fully, your power sparks a few times and jumps into the different streams. Once it’s saturated both magics a good deal, you direct it around and around, mixing the myothsphere and dreamsand into a glittering stream. At some point, the magics cease to be different things and soft, golden whispers emanate from the swirls. The three of you pull and push. The new substance nudges off the rooftop and pours into the windows of the nearest high-rises.

You release yourself from the magic and stumble a few steps, catching Kailash’s neck for balance. Katherine and Sandy put the finishing touches on the stream and then step back to view the work. You’re still not sure how they can withstand such a huge energy drain.

“Beautiful,” Sandy whispers. He glances back at you. “Ready for a few more?”

 _No,_ you think, but nod anyway. You’re barely in the saddle before they take off.

You all hop from point to point, down the easternmost coasts, pausing to send more streams out over several villages or towns. After awhile, you’re less tired than you are excited, and you look forward to being able to see the world. That is, until Katherine veers off and lands in Taiwan.

“Was this on the schedule?” you ask.

She doesn’t reply, only motions for you to start your work. Between your nervousness and the memories ramming back into your mind, the stream ends up weaker than the others, and the exhaustion catches up. By the time you eke out a viable mixture, your knees are shaking and threatening to collapse. Katherine drags you to the saddle and flies a few miles to a small field. A bright pillar of marble is sculpted into a fountain there. A dark, metal square is tacked onto one of the faces. Katherine heads for it.

“Come see the memorial.”

You look at Sandy. “Did you know she was doing this?” He nods and pushes you ahead.

You wobble across the flat ground, the dew leaving wet spots on your boots. It feels like you’re trying to walk in a dream, constantly moving, but getting nowhere. Sandy follows just behind you, his luminous body cutting through the night one foot ahead of you. You stop before the memorial. The marble shines, so glossy and beautiful, even at night. The square of text has a watery symbol on it, surrounding a wall of characters you can’t read. You place your hand against it, running your fingers over the embossed words.

“‘Here we place a marker for the tragedy of the Zhuokou River,’” Katherine reads. Each word cuts into your soul. “'The needless violence, fueled by greed and apathy, is immortalized here as a reminder of the delicate balance of the world. Nothing happens without a consequence.'”

She starts reading out the names, one by one. There are so many. You hadn’t realized. Your legs give out, and you kneel, head down in complete shame as every child, teacher, and chaperone—and their ages—tumble into your brain and heart. Barely any of the kids had been older than Jordan. His face envelopes your teary vision, and you imagine if it had been him that day. Convulsing on the bank of the river. Dire welts springing up along his body where his skin had been exposed. His hands clawing at his throat as it swelled up.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if it was your own son or a stranger across the world. This shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

They let you sit there, weeping and hiccuping as the true gravity of your crimes crashes down on top of you. It had been so easy to think about it in theoretical terms. “150 people sick and 86 dead” is just a headline with numbers you can’t readily process. Now, looking at the list of names, it becomes so much more real. Eighty-six human beings. Gone. Painfully. You have to do something. It’s too late to prevent it, but surely you can do something to make up for it. Or begin to, anyway.

The arrows rattle in your quiver. Your other one with its amazing storage capabilities had been lost in Pitch’s lair in the final scuffle. The noise is annoying, but right now it helps you remember one of the arrows you made. It’s on the more experimental side, made with petals from a few flowers Bunny accidentally created in his holiday haze. It shouldn’t destroy anything, though. You reach back and grab it. Standing, you tell the others to stand back a bit. They do, and you tap the arrowhead to the marble.

A burst of glimmering gold-green shoots out. You cough, having got the worst of it, and toss aside the broken shaft. Vines snake up the pillar, taking on a life of their own until they tangle at the top. Rare flowers burst from their buds and stretch up to soak in the moonlight. A subtle wave of black iridescence goes through each leafy tendril before fading again.

“I don’t know how long that’ll last,” you say, wiping the residue off your hands. “But it’s what I can do for now.”

Katherine nudges her goose into flight. “That was very nice of you.”

“But it was very harsh of you.” You glance at Sandy. “And you.”

“You needed to see it. At least once,” he whispers.

You don’t argue. Can’t argue. You withdraw, not speaking much for the next few stops. Instead, you throw every speck of your being into catalyzing the magic. The children need to believe, and you can’t let them or the Guardians down. The lazy swirls flow over each and every town with a renewed brilliance, a new energy. This comes, of course, at the cost of your own. At first, it’s just numbness in your limbs. A few hours later, your head is constantly swimming, and the steady pulse of a migraine joins it.

“Go easy on yourself,” Sandy says, lifting you up to the saddle once again. “We have a long night ahead.”

“I can do this.” You try to shrug them off as they strap you down.

You’re somewhere over Australia when Katherine cries out, “What in the world?” and you all descend. At a certain height, she starts circling, calling for you and Sandy. After disentangling you from the saddle, you both wander over. It looks like the pictures you've seen of the outback; in the distance sits the distinctive silhouette of Uluru.

“Look familiar?” Katherine says, pointing down. Below you, embedded in the brush, is another spire. You gasp and almost fling your self off the goose in an attempt to lean out of the saddle for a better glance.

“Another one? What for?”

Sandy has one hand on the back of your shirt, but he leans out as well. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says. "Not even back in the Golden Age."

“Well, there goes my next question,” Katherine says.

She lowers a little bit more, and you can see the scurrying shadows surrounding it. Taking a deep breath and preparing for the nausea, you close your eye and lift your lens. The darkness goes deeper than you initially thought, seeping into the ground. Dark veins lead out from the spire. The spire itself is taller, brighter, churning with the same violet energy as the one at Thera. The area directly around the spire feels desaturated. At first glance, it looks fine, but there’s a lethargic fade to it barely indicated by the dying plants. Oddly enough, the fading land is cleanly delineated on all sides, surrounded by perfectly geometrical borders.

As you keep looking, something draws your attention back to the spire itself. There’s something moving within the energy. Eyes. Multiple sets of mismatched eyes home in on your position, and as they all slide to you in unison, a horrible pain makes you go blind for a second and numbs your entire head. You dry heave and drag yourself back into the saddle. You gulp down the rushing air, trying to calm yourself. Katherine and Sandy mutter to each other. She drives back into the open air, drawing out a small communication device.

“This is Katherine. We’re over Australia right now, about to make a hop across the ocean. We found another one of those spires in the outback. Tell you more at the rendezvous.” She repeats the message two more times and waits. A chorus of replies stream through the device, most of them screams in disbelief. Katherine raises it up to her mouth again. “We can’t panic right now. Just keep going with the plan and we’ll discuss at the meetup.”

The next few stops are quieter, more focused. All of you use your magic, take a brief rest, and continue to the next point. Again and again and again. You push yourself even harder now. Whatever the fearlings are planning, it can’t come to pass. You won’t let it. The pressure in you head worsens at every stop. Katherine and Sandy look at your weirdly, but they don’t really say anything, though given that you can’t hear properly anymore, maybe you just haven’t noticed.

By the next touchdown—the second to last before the midway rendezvous at Thera—you’ve calmed a bit. Or, your mind reacting five second late to everything has you acting calmer. You ready yourself, tense up, and grab onto the magics once again. Less than a minute in, a new wave of nausea and pain sweeps over you.

 _Hang on,_ you say to yourself. _Just a little m—_

The sky becomes the ground. The horizon tilts and spins on a new axis. The side of your head hurts, and your ear is ringing. You hear a shout. The blurry figures of the Guardians hover over you, and with a golden flash, you’re in complete darkness. It shifts and roils like stormclouds at different heights. Your lens is gone, eyesight lopsided once again. The dizziness increases, and you thrash in a circle for a second before managing to shut off vision to your other eye. Chattering echoes from the folds of darkness. Familiar chitters that send panic shivering down your spine.

Something jumps from the shadows and scrapes your neck, right over the mark. The gross, creeping feeling shoots from shoulder to shoulder and back again. You twist in not-quite agony, a silent scream ripping from you. As soon as your mouth opens, the shadows shoot down your throat, swarming to every corner of your body and making you go limp. The only thing remaining sharp is your mind, which jolts to full lucidity.

_This is a dream._

A thin hand with too-long fingers, attached to a too-long arm emerges from the darkness and touches one, spindly claw to the center of your forehead.

 _Wake up,_ you order yourself. _Wake up!_

Pitch at the table, against a wall, in bed, back at the table. Talking authoritatively, but silently. At a distance. Your vision moves to the Guardians, trawling through conversations from the previous month.

“Wake up!” you scream, and the wind gets knocked out of you as your chest slams against the seatbelt. Kailash squawks and flaps for a moment before evening out her flight pattern. The mark agitates against you, and you swat at it like a bunch of ants are crawling over you.

“Shh, shh. You’re safe,” Sandy whispers.

It takes a moment of wild, panicked looking before you realize you’re on the back of the goose. Katherine’s glaring back from her driver’s perch. You rub your eyes and try to remember the last few minutes. Hours?

“Did I pass out?”

“You collapsed on a rooftop because you were pushing yourself too hard!” she yells. Kailash slows down a bit as her driver’s attention is split. “You can kill yourself if you keep doing that!”

“I didn’t want to let you down! Or the kids.”

“Save your self-flagellation for later!” She’s furious, her hair whipping in a tangling mane around her face. Even Sandy takes a step back. Katherine blinks and pulls back a bit, but she’s still pissed. “Sorry. But rest up for now. We’ll be at the rendezvous in a little bit."

She flicks the reins and the goose speeds up. Sandy shakes his head.

“What happened in your nightmare?” he asks.

You wipe at the mark again. “One of the Nightmare Men. It sent shadows through me and started… I think looking through my memories of the last month?” You swallow against your dry mouth. “They might be on to us.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. But please hold on as much as you can.”

“I might need more sleep before we’re done.”

“I highly recommend it,” he says, holding out more sand. You touch a bit of your own magic to it, and it flares up. He reaches out, and almost one second later, you awaken from quick, dreamless sleep.

“Better?”

You nod, feeling your mind slosh around. It’s not a lie, but you’re not exactly better. You watch the glittering, volcanic islands close in.


	39. The Storm

Pitch blinks against the low light of the suburbs. His darkvision hasn’t gone the way of his powers, but he can’t break through the layers of darkness the same as before. He doesn’t see himself stumbling over gigantic roots or falling into ditches anytime soon, but his boots are currently squishing uncomfortably from where he’d stepped into a puddle that was particularly well-camouflaged as just another dark part of the ground.

Pacing around the area yet again, He opens his senses to make sure no shadows are stalking him and the others. Most of the sounds are the typical nighttime ambiance. The faint roar of television snow from an old, forgotten set. Buzzing and chirping bugs rustling the grasses and leaves. Feral cats fighting for dominance against the commuting woodland scavengers. The smell of fresh dew collecting on the plants. The low, low hum of natural magic flows settling over the sleepy world. Kidra is nearby, on loan from the spirit so he has a slightly more dignified means of getting around than shoving his lanky form on the back of a reindeer.

A dry branch snaps behind him, echoing off the small houses and old asphalt. He fights the impulse to immediately swing around. Kidra is unbothered. As casually as he can, he brings his hand to the rapier at his belt, leaning as if he’s just a regular man with a sword standing still in the middle of the empty street in the darkest hours. He reaches out to the shadows to get a better feel for the area and nearly loses track of his other senses once he remembers he cannot anymore. The presence fades back into the night for a moment, but he catches a pitter-patter creeping up behind him again. Pitch concentrates, and it resolves into the sound of a large man in heavy boots trying to tiptoe on a broken road.

 _Three… Two… One._ “Are you ready to move on, North?”

He turns around, nose barely skimming past the outstretched hands half a second away from grabbing him. North shoots him a crotchety stinkeye and straightens up, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“I thought I’d try,” he replies.

“I’ve spent too long playing these games to fall prey to an amateur’s gambit.” He pats North on his shoulder. North jokingly swats the hand away. “Good effort, though.”

The fairy skids between them, muttering to herself and searching up and down the street wildly. She pauses for a second, going so still that her wings threaten to stop, and then she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Everything a-okay, Tooth?”

“Yeah. This area’s clean. We can move on to the city now.”

She flies off, leaving North to mount his reindeer and Pitch to whistle for Kidra. As they take off, a thick fog rolls in, and thunder sounds in the near distance. It’s sudden, unexpected, and as the small suburb disappears under the clouds, Pitch swears he sees a tall shape take form in the center of it, a form not unlike that of a Nightmare Man from where he watches it fade into the distance.

He doesn’t dwell on the oddity, however. As the three of them make their way into the city proper, the fairy immediately darts off to find teeth. From the brief birds-eye view he has before North indicates their descent, it’s is as lively as ever, regardless of the hour. But it’s made even more magnificent with the swirled streams and deltas of magic drifting into apartment windows.

The evidence of the spirit’s presence is more than enough to soothe his worries about them. Once he gets close enough, he reaches out, breaching the lazy flow and stirring it together more. A quiet, new story pulses with the inspiration of a dream behind it, encouraged by the crackles of iridescence binding the two together. A small bit of the magic sticks to his hand. So familiar in tone and color. He lets the flow curl through his fingers for a moment before returning it to the main source. North smirks at him, but if he laughs or makes any remark, it’s lost to the wind whining past them. They land next to the fairy, who’s twitching as she tries to decide which way to dash off.

North leaves his reindeer in his care. He takes it them to the tallest tower, taking watch once again. It’s almost boring, but hopefully that means all is according to plan. No hiccups, or worse, conflict.

Just as the thought crosses his mind, another fog rolls in. He covers his mouth, thinking it to be the smog he’s encountered before, but no. He releases his mouth and nose, and he takes a deep inhale. Simply water vapor. Thunder rolls in the distance, almost identical to the one in the suburbs not thirty minutes ago. Pitch grows uneasy, not taking his hand off his scabbard until the Guardians reconvene to his position and take off for elsewhere.

They bounce around the world, visiting many familiar haunts and havens he’s used in his day. North takes a good humor to the travels, singing songs and marches, and engaging Pitch in friendly conversation. Ever since the Moon revealed Pitch had been chosen as his godfather, North, Sanderson, and Jack had been increasingly friendly. Pitch isn’t sure what to make of them. They’ve been enemies for so long— _Are still enemies,_ he tells himself—that it seems a distant dream he would ever consider himself close to any of them. He almost prefers the goose girl’s distance, the rabbit’s homicidal glare, and the fairy’s disinterest. He’s dealt with that before, on a grand scale. He’s used to it. It makes sense.

“Anyway, just as we get peak of mountaintop, _wham!_ Huge crash into other bandit camp also sneaking around mountain in dead of night!” North wheezes as he recounts an event from his petty criminal years.

Pitch nods, not looking at him, but keeping an ear out. Despite his overbearing jolliness, he’s easy to listen to. Easier than Sanderson’s nostalgic adoration or Jack’s bratty sarcasm. North talks. He listens. North talks more. He acts like he’s hanging on every word. The conversation carries itself.

“Turns out other bandits were using same informant as us. We called truce and hunted down that two-faced weasel and hung him—” He pauses. Pitch swerves his head to him, eyes wide and confused, ready to be impressed and terrified by such an act coming from such a man. The serious look North’s wearing doesn’t last as he screws up his face and sneezes so forcefully he nearly tips the poor animal under him. “—hung him by his ratty trousers, wanted poster tacked to his shirt, for local authorities to find on next day!”

Pitch laughs with him, not for the same reason North does, but the whole ordeal forces it from him. He shakes his head and wipes his face, ignoring the smugness on North’s face.

“Quiet!” the fairy suddenly yells.

She perches on a rocky outcropping. Kidra catches their large claws into the crevices like a bat, swinging around so that they sidle up to her, even as Pitch tries to make distance. It’s rather difficult when he’s hanging vertically off a stubborn creature. North draws up his mount and hovers. A muffled sound comes from the device she holds in her hands. She holds it close to her ear.

“—Australia right now, about to make a hop across the ocean. We found another one of those spires in the outback. Tell you more at the rendezvous.” The goose girl’s voice barks through the device. There’s a pause, and the three of them glance at each other, concerned. Her voice reappears and repeats the message.

“No way…” the fairy says. Her wings beat in agitation. “What’s going on?”

She glares at Pitch, and he holds up a hand. “I know as much as you do. This was not part of any of my plans with them.”

She regards him suspiciously, but drops it as she tenses up again. More teeth ahead. They tuck the knowledge away for now and continue to their next few stops. She grows increasingly anxious and snippy, and as they come to the last stop before Thera, she nearly whirls herself into a breakdown. North soothes her and she tears off, pointing out a few windows nearby. Pitch reaches for the reindeer’s halter, but North hands him two bags, one empty and the other heavy with coins. He raises an eyebrow and jingles the bag.

“Tooth says there are lots of teeth here to collect, and we are already behind schedule. We have to meet others in three hours.” He pokes a thick finger into Pitch’s chest. “You help, and we get to rendezvous faster. You see spirit sooner.”

North is always keen on dangling the spirit in front of him, like a carrot before a horse. He does it because it works. Pitch nods, driving Kidra to a third-floor window North points out to him. He pries the window open with his sword, unable to simply phase past it like the others. Luckily, the children inside have decided that locking a third floor window is unnecessary. He would have hated trudging back to North to ask for a lift inside.

He hauls himself through the window, tipping over a rogue tower of Legos. He bites his tongue against the slight sound, opening one eye to make sure the child is still asleep. No movement, just still lumps under the covers. _Lumps? Plural? Wait…_ He blinks again and sure enough, there are two twin beds right next to each other. One child has kicked all of the covers down, and the other curls into the fetal position, the crown of their head the only thing visible. Pitch sighs in relief, opens the bag and creeps his hand under the pillow of the child under the blankets.

Thunder rolls in the distance. He extracts his hand and goes back to the window, trying to see if—A fog rolls in. Kidra clings to the side of the building, letting out a disgruntled huff. He scratches behind their ear, saying, “Let me know if it gets closer.”

Just then, a crack of thunder rings out like it’s just outside, a full thirty seconds of rumbles and growls. He jumps from the sudden sound, banging his head against the window sash and yelping in pain. Pulling himself back into the room, he rubs the sore spot on his head and whispers a stream of curses, some of them even in Earth languages.

“Oooh!” A gasp cuts off the sound behind him. Pitch freezes, then turns to face the other end of the room. They’re both awake, the elder of the two glaring at him and shoving his little brother behind him.

“That’s the Boogeyman,” he explains, spitting the word like he’d just eaten a something foul. “He’s evil.”

Pitch doesn’t know what to say. He can’t scare them into submission, nor does he feel like doing so, regardless. But the one has already made up his mind about who this stranger in their room is, and there’s no time for a lengthy description of the Golden Age, Kozmotis, the shadows, et cetera. He shifts a bit where he stands, the bag of coins jingling where he holds it.

The boy zeroes in on it, pointing. “What’s that?”

“This?” Pitch has no plan. “This is… Oh, you know just…” They boy backs up, guiding his brother towards the door. Suddenly, the little one breaks free, gasping, and he scrambles back over to his bed, He flips the pillow and retrieves his tooth. _Ah. There it is._

“Pitch?” The fairy leans into the window. He has never been more delighted to see her. The children gasp and start crying out for her, and she watches him carefully.

 _I think... Yes, I can work with this._ Pitch draws his sword and holds his other arm out, drawing himself to his full height.

“There you are, fairy,” he sneers, dripping his words in the slimiest affect he can conjure in a moment. “These brats were just whining for you.” He holds up the bag of coins and shakes it deliberately. “Notice your belief going down? Thought I’d swoop in and make some collections of my own.”

He throws a wide grin on for good measure. Her eyes sharpen and her scowl grows. Her hands immediately go for her swords.

“How dare you,” she says, lunging.

Pitch drops the coin bag and raises his rapier to defend himself. Her swords hit against it with such force that it rattles his arm. He grunts in pain and slides around to get closer to the window, ready for her to activate the crystal and dump him out. She whirls and screams, slicing at him from two angles. He blocks one incoming strike, but the other slices through his clothes, barely cutting into his flesh. It’s then he realizes she’s not in on his plan.

“How _dare you!”_ she shrieks, going for yet another strike.

He maneuvers around to avoid the lethal blows, twisting himself into knots, desperately trying to think of a way to signal to her that he panicked and miscalculated. She catches him by the wrist and flings him face-first against the wall so hard the books on the shelf next to him fall down. He sees stars for a moment, and then cold steel at the back of his neck.

“Give me one reason,” she growls.

“Oh please, fairy,” he says, carefully choosing his words and hoping that these children are too young and tired to recognize intentionally bad acting. “What hope do you really have of cornering me? That tooth, _right over there_ in that boy’s hand—” He nods his head a few times for emphasis.

She whispers, “What the…?” behind him.

“—That tooth is the final key to my plan, and I won’t have you interrupting it.” He widens his eyes and wills her to understand. From the corner of his eyes, he sees her regard him carefully. “You and your Guardian friends stand no chance against me! It’s not like you have a way to _instantly_ subdue me. I am the Boogeyman!”

“…Huh,” she chuckles. She grabs him by the scruff of his neck and tosses him to the window. She’s still confused, but flies high enough into the air to tower over him. She glances from him to the children and reaches into her satchel, drawing herself up straight. “Funny you should mention that, Pitch Black.”

_Good lord, she’s worse than I am at this._

She raises the crystal above her head, and the children gasp. Their eyes shine in victory, and the elder leers at him. Pitch grows warm as he stands there, waiting for the final, humiliating blow.

“I recently found a neat power crystal I want you to test out for me.”

She activates it, and the small flash lights up the entire room for a second. His wrists snap together, and he nearly uppercuts himself as they’re pulled to his neck. He stumbles back and cracks his head against the window for the second time. The fairy darts over to him, grabs his robes, and shoves him over the edge.

From the hard ground, he watches the window, hears the children’s cheers and thanks and the fairy’s commendations on their bravery. He coughs, heaving in another breath where it got knocked from him.

He watches the sky. The stars and moon fade away as more of the fog rolls in. Thicker and thicker, until he can barely see Kidra as they crawl down and nuzzle him. He rolls over and gets his knees under him, leaning on the creature to help him stand. An eerie essence ripples through the haze, slipping behind him and down a nearby alley. Pitch steadies himself on his legs, listening. A bolt of lightning strikes down the street, the electricity making his hair stand on end as he’s so close. Kidra bleats and gallops down the opposite way, disappearing into the cover. He tries to follow, but a shifting presence behind him makes him stop and turn.

At first, he sees nothing but the subtle layers of water vapor. Then a tall shape fades in. It’s far larger than he is, judging by the wispy shadow. He can’t tell if it’s moving or if it’s an illusion from the mist.

“Hello?” he calls, taking a step toward it. “You’re not one of the Nightmare Men, are you?” It definitely shifts. Silently. Watching. “Are you?”

He takes a few more careful steps. The figure doesn’t seem to get closer or resolve into something familiar. It remains hidden behind thickening layers of fog, and if it has anything to say, it doesn’t say it loud enough to reach over the constant rumbles of thunder.

“Why are you following us?” A few more steps. He trips and barely keeps himself steady. “What do you want?”

“Pitch!”

A tiny hand grabs his shoulders, startling him so that he catches his foot and falls to the ground. The fairy’s face comes close to his from the fog, and as he glances back to the figure, it’s gone. The fog dissipates quickly after.

“Pitch,” she says, hauling him up by the elbow. “That was some of the worst acting I have ever seen.” He rolls his eyes. She holds up the tooth. “But it worked, and they believe more than ever.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Once we’re done at the rendezvous, maybe we should do that for the rest of the night. We’ll at least have a little more help collecting once the fairies join us.” She snorts. “I know I’ll have fun at least.”

She flits off, ignoring his gesture to release him. The fog lifts completely, and North stumbles down the road, Kidra dragging him by the sleeve. He looks between them, confused, and the fairy starts laughing.

“Let’s go meet up with the rest,” she says. She takes off into the sky, not waiting for them to get situated.

“What—?” North starts.

“Just please release me and let’s move on. I do not want to talk about it right now.”

He raises his crystal and deactivates the chains. Pitch mounts Kidra, whistles, and they’re off. Soon enough, they’re passing over the Mediterranean. North flies next to the fairy, and after a minute, he throws back his head and howls in laughter. Pitch scrunches down as close to Kidra as he can, glancing back.

Lightning flashes in a dome of fog as it drifts across the surface of sea, keeping pace with them.


	40. Spires

The air tastes of ash and decay. It strengthens the closer you get to the island, and by the time you touch down, you feel like you’re inhaling one part oxygen and ten parts wet sand. It wasn’t pleasant the first time you and Katherine were here, but the sensation has become grosser, thicker, textured like cottage cheese. You can’t even wonder how the humans of the villages are carrying on, or how they can continue to at this rate.

As you descend, the trio of North, Toothiana, and Pitch come into view over the dark horizon. You lean over the side of the saddle and whistle. Kidra perks up and attempts to veer off from the others, but Pitch guides them back in formation. After he’s done soothing them, he looks out and blows you a kiss. You grab it, tapping your fingers to your lips. He’s too far away—and you’re still too lightheaded—to see his full reaction, but there will be time once you land. North calls out and waves to you all, a distant shout through the stalled atmosphere.

The others land before you, and Kidra slips through Pitch’s fingers as soon as they’re turned loose, bleating and hopping around the area Katherine was trying to land. You laugh and then whistle, commanding them away. They continue to bleat and yelp, circling the goose as she lands. Once she’s situated, Katherine hops down and starts cooing at her pet, producing a large handful of leafy greens the bird greedily inhales. Sandy floats from the saddle next, whipping up a ramp of dreamsand that Kidra shoves their way up. They snuffle into you, rocking you a little too hard, and your head hurts again. You pull yourself up, leaning against them, and disembark.

You congregate around the rim of the pit you and Katherine found the spire in. The fearlings are still down there, more of them, and the spire looks the least bit bigger. It’s made of a kind of crystal, and you wonder if it grows like crystals do over time.

“Very odd,” North mutters. He leans over to Katherine. “Why did they not build it over there?” He points the center of the ring of islands, where the caldera sits quietly below the surface. “Seems to me building evil spire on top of very active magic intersection would be stronger.”

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Pitch says.

You feel the need to say something, but through the low-key haze you’re in, you can’t remember what it was. The haze turns very high-key after a few minutes, and Pitch checks over his shoulders and into the air for something. He meets your eyes and smiles, cocking his head to take you in. You grow warm all over. You start to lift your lens to get another look at the spire itself, but Sandy yanks your hand away.

“Not now,” he says. “We need you to finish out the night. And then you need to recover.”

Before you can object, he pins your hand to your side with dreamsand. Pitch clears his throat, glaring daggers at him, but he brushes the look off. North motions to Pitch, who joins him in leaning over the rim. You get as close as possible, the sand falling away. Pitch shakes his head.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. My plans were about overwhelming you all and corrupting the land so that you had a harder time forming belief. Long-game tactics like that.”

“I looked at the one in Australia through my dark eye,” you say.

“Why would you do that?” Pitch fails to hide his horror.

“There were a bunch of eyes in the spire itself.” You shrug in apology to him. “They focused in on me as we passed over.”

“By eyes,” Toothiana says, “do mean just eyeballs? Or were they attached to something.”

“Attached. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it at the time.”

“Maybe a huge, oozing shadow monster?”

The living darkness from the lair. You’d almost forgotten; you’d tried to forget how the huge, creeping abomination filled your vision and blended into the walls so that there was no escape. You shiver.

“Yeah. I think just like that, actually.”

You sway a little too far one way, and Pitch catches you by the collar. He gives a reassuring rub to your shoulder as you steady. His eyes still glow in the dark. Not quite as brilliantly, but they’re welcome beacons for your own tired eyes to rest on. He continues the soothing touch, daring to run his fingers over the patch of exposed skin of your upper back.

“Ahem,” North coughs.

Pitch starts to move away, but just as quickly, he holds your shoulder and tugs the back of your shirt down a bit, moving close enough that you can hear him mutter “No, no…”

“Pitch!”

He releases you and scuttles to the other side of North. You catch his eye, but he’s just looking at the mark on your neck with a horrible, sad expression. You suddenly wish you had your cloak on, wish that you could erase that pitiful, self-hating look from his face. You know it too well.

“Hey, Bunny,” Katherine’s voice pipes up next to you. “How’s the night going?”

“So far, so good,” he replies through the device, voice a little muffled. There’s a thud and a faraway swear, and then he’s back. “Who decided to make these bloody things spherical?”

North raises his hand.

“Anyway, not much on my end. Source o’ Spring is sittin’ pretty, and the dreamsand is ready to go if needed. What’s up with that thing in my backyard?”

“We’re not sure, yet.”

“Where exactly is it so I can take a look tomorrow?”

“About five miles west of Uluru. There’s more activity going on around the Thera spire, and apparently that eldritch creature from Burgess might have been inside the Australia spire? Maybe just watching through it?”

“Horrible to know. Keep me posted.”

“We shall.” Katherine adjusts a few things on the sphere, and then she says, “Jack?”

“Whazzup?”

Toothiana shoves her way forward. “How’s my palace?”

“Quiet. Teeth finally got all moved and stuff, so the backup’s deploying all over the world. But uh…” He cuts himself off. You all look at each other, then back at the device. He hems and haws for a second before saying, “Look, after you called in about the other spire, I asked a few of the fairies to go out and just, y’know patrol, and—”

“No!” you all yell together.

“Southeast of the palace, about fifty miles, between the ancient temple site and the cliff. It’s tucked into an alcove just off the path.”

“What’s going on?!” Toothiana shakes violently. You reach over to comfort her. “How come we didn’t find or sense these? How many more are there?”

“I think those are the questions we’re all asking, Tooth,” Jack says, trying to calm her. “But we’re not going to get an answer tonight. Also, despite this, the rest of the tooth boxes are glowing strong. The operation is working!”

A sigh of relief runs through you all. That makes this all worth it, and the thought of all those kids content and happy gives you a second wind. You can finish out the night. It won’t be too hard.

A crack of thunder echoes off the rocky island. Pitch swerves around, hand to his sword, and searches the air for something. There’s nothing but storm clouds. Huge storm clouds, surrounding the entire island you’re on to the point you can barely see the central caldera anymore.

_Is this place prone to rain, or is it just because I’m here again?_ you wonder.

Pitch leans over to North, and the man listens, then nods. Pitch looks over to you, saying, “I’m going to scout a bit, just to ensure the shadows aren’t stalking us.”

“Stay safe,” you say.

He smiles and sneaks his hand over to squeeze yours as he passes, disappearing into the thick fog that’s rolled in. A long thirty minutes goes by before he returns. North and Toothiana fidget with their control crystals the longer he’s gone, not easily paying attention to Katherine, Sandy, and you as you go over what you know and what might be the reasoning behind it all.

“The last time me and Katherine were here, I managed to take a small chunk out of the spire,” you say. “I had to get out of there, though, so I wasn’t able to pick it up.”

“You shouldn’t have done that in the first place,” Katherine replies. “Your reckless behavior is going to get you or someone else killed.”

You bristle a bit. “Forgive me for wanting to actively participate in life after nearly a century of self-imposed isolation. I only just tonight faced my last mistake in life.”

Katherine closes her eyes and clenches her fists. “That’s a good thing, but you can’t let it eat you alive. We need you—”

“Yeah. _You_ need _me._ Half of this operation hinges on my cooperation, and you’re lucky I’m willing to help.” Your neck itches, and the feeling zings across your upper back. The night is barely half over, and it’s already been too long. Sandy zips up between you two.

“Come now. No fighting. Not tonight.”

The angry impulse fades from you, as fast as it appeared in the first place. All that’s left is a deeper spillage of exhaustion coursing through you with every pulse of your heart. You shake your head and lean on Kidra a little more. Katherine sits on the railing, watching the shadows scurry around the bottom of the cinder cone.

There’s a few quiet _splats_ of drops against pavement. They get louder, more frequent, and you all huddle together under Kailash’s wings until the storm gets too violent for even the wall of a goose to handle the sideways rain. You end up down the hill a little bit, protected by the steep slope, spire still within sight, but very much out of range of the mass of fearlings surrounding it. The next few minutes fall into silence, the rain eventually moving to another part of the island. Finally, Pitch returns.

He fiddles with his clothing. His gait is wobbly, and his rapier is on the opposite hip from where it normally sits. He watches you from the corner of his eye, and finally makes full eye contact once he’s adjusted his clothes to his liking. He takes a step to you, but North intercepts him.

“You were on cusp of making mistake, going so far so long.” He squeezes the crystal in his palm and the mirror ones on Pitch’s manacles flash in warning. “Do not test us again like that.”

Pitch freezes, and then he brings his arms flat to his sides, straightens to his full height, and stands impossibly still. He looks so thin like this.

“My apologies. North,” he states, pronouncing every word with utmost precision. “It was not my intention to invoke your wrath.”

“Maybe not, but you should appreciate limits.”

Pitch remains still, waiting, glancing over to the spire every now and then. He suddenly takes a step so quick you’re not sure when he actually starts moving and sidesteps North to approach you. Kidra slides in front of you, sniffing and swerving their ears. He holds out a hand for them to examine, and after a few minutes, they sigh and allow him to pet them. Their ears never stop moving, however, and they emit a nearly-imperceptible whine.

“Did something happen out there?” you ask.

“There was a fearling attack,” he respond, petting from one exact point on Kidra’s neck to another. “They nearly overwhelmed me; however, I was skilled enough to fight them back and to return to you. We should be on our ways before they decide to surround us.”

“Agreed—”

A whine like a CRT television rises over the area, and you shake your head as its gets louder and more insistent at your eardrums. The others shake their heads at the sound as well, some scraping their fingers into them to try and clear the sound out. It’s stronger than last time, more insistent. The spire across the way pulses with violet light visible to your regular eye now. Ripples of blinding whitish-purple zoom up the height of the spire, and the shifting masses of shadows around it beat in time.

All you can do is look out and watch the spectacle, shiver as a halo of energy starts to surround the tip of the spire, cover your ears as a vacuum pull makes them pop like you’re diving to the bottom of a pool’s deep end.

“What’s going on?!” Toothiana shouts over the quiet din.

A portion of the shadows by the spire shift and you get the impression it’s looking right at you. You reach for your lens, but once again, a hand reaches out and stops you. Pitch stares at you, grip tight and precise, and he shakes his head once.

“It’s time to move on,” he says, drifting his fingers down your arm in a whispering line. “We should stop them through our other channels so that whatever they’re planning does not come to fruition.”

Four thin beams emit like sun rays from the central light. Actually, it looks like they're drawing toward it: two from the east, one from the south, one from the west. The pressure releases as a dull, wide beam shoots up from the tip of the spire. It pierces the clouds, the force of it shattering a hole in them and dragging wisps up with it. It’s so dull that it wraps around to uncomfortably bright, but between the dots floating in front of your eyes from the light, you see elongated eyes and teeth stretch up and up and up until you lose track of them in the cloud cover.

It’s over in barely a second. Everything is quiet and staticky, smelling earthy like the world after a hurricane, but with an undertone of hollow charcoal.

You meet everyone else’s wide, terrified, confused eyes. None of you have to say anything to realize that whatever just happened is one: bad, and two: unknown. You resort to begging Pitch with your eyes to tell you what the hell just happened. He looks unblinking at the spot where the light beam disappeared, only catching on to everyone’s stares after several minutes.

“What was that?” North asks.

He moves his shoulders up and down. “I don’t quite know. The fearlings are quite protective of it, apparently. I don’t think it’s a weapon, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“A signal?” Katherine asks.

He peers at her for a second until she shifts uncomfortably, leaning on her goose’s neck. He replies, “Perhaps, but I think it best if we retreat for now to examine it another day.”

Katherine nods, but is dissatisfied. She draws out the communication device again, adjusts a few things, and says, “Jack! Did anything happen over by you just now?”

“Just weird, faint sound and a bolt of lightning, why?”

She frowns, but Pitch is too busy staring at you to notice. “Something happened at Thera, too. Keep an eye out, and we’ll brief you back at the Pole.”

“Uh… Okay, if you’re sure.”

Katherine tosses the device into her bag and jumps onto the back of her goose. Sandy floats up to the saddle, and they both look at you. You pat Kidra a few more times, shifting nearer to Pitch.

“Goodbye for now,” you say. You brush your fingers across his hand. He looks down at it, and then places his palm over yours. North clears his throat again. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Of course,” he replies. The corners of his mouth turn up. He reaches up to your face, but the manacles activate and he nearly falls over as his hands come so close to uppercutting him when they’re drawn to his neck. He growls, but backs off. Kidra follows, ears back for a moment. The manacles release, and Pitch swings his leg over them.

You reach up, and Sandy lifts you into the saddle. There’s nothing you can do right now except continue with the plan and hope the shadows don’t make a move. Pitch seems sure about that much. Kailash flaps her wings once, twice, and you’re heading up through the sky, still grinding your teeth against the remnants of dark static. You watch the others take off, heading north toward the mainland. The storm that came and went actually still lingers below you, concentrating itself on a small outpost of a village, tossing around garbage cans and stray shadows.

You, Sandy, and Katherine say very little over the rest of the night, except to snap at each other the more tired you get. You pour yourselves into your magic, especially at the pre-planned saturation points. The fairies and yetis who now accompany you stare awkwardly as the three of you grumble and struggle to cooperate. Even the quiet, benign Sandy gets a pushed little too far somewhere around the Andes mountains, creating a huge burst of dreamsand that settles over most of the town. Extreme quiet follows, and after a small investigation you find that a few essential night workers are either snoozing or deeply asleep after exposure. You leave the fairies and yetis to wake as many as they can so that you can move on to the next point. By the time you’re ready to head back to the Pole, everyone’s exhausted.

“Sorry. For yelling at you,” Katherine whispers. She’s tying herself down to the saddle with you, trusting Kailash to take them back on her own. “It’s still reckless, but your heart’s in the right place.”

“No problem,” you reply, yawning, half dead and hearing everything as if it’s underwater. “We’ll have a sleepover once we get back and snore it out.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” She chuckles. “I’ve never really had one of those. Not in the traditional sense.”

“There’s a first for everything.”

You snooze a bit, never quite drifting off, but never fully awake. The brief dreams you have come and go like a skipping stone, and a weird presence lingers at the edges of each one. When the dawn finally catches up to you, you’re back at the Pole.


	41. The Itch

You lumber out to the central hub, eyes still bleary from the night before. Feeling your way over to the loft where the planning table sits, you plop yourself on a chair and tuck your head into your arms. If you hadn’t been unable to lay in your bed without uneasiness settling over you whenever you closed your eyes, that’s where you’d be. Instead, you let the intricately carved polished wood dig into your back.

You lift your head as a muffled thunk hits the table in front of you. North sets a steaming mug down, and for once it’s not cocoa. The astringent smell of dark roasted coffee wafts to you and activates the Pavlovian response of instant wakefulness you developed through your years of university.

“All hail the placebo effect,” you slur under your breath, drawing the mug closer and taking a deliberate sniff. You feel even more awake. One sip later, and you relax back in your chair. North toasts you and dumps about ten tablespoons of sugar into his black coffee. He shoves it over to you when you motion for it.

As you stir it in, you ask, “So, did we win last night?”

“As in terminate shadows? No, but that was not point of mission, of course.”

“I guess I mean that despite…” You sigh and gesture, unable or unwilling to say it out loud. North nods and motions you to continue. “Did we accomplish the goal?”

He leans over the railing and takes a glance at the workshop hub. “Lots of lights on globe. Southern hemisphere is looking brighter than before, but I will need to ask for yetis’ analysis to be sure.”

You take a long sip, not caring about the burns bubbling across the roof of your mouth. At least you can feel something right now. With any luck, the coffee will help quiet the ringing in your ear that never quite left after you passed out the night before.

“But does it at least seem like we won? That we’re in a good place for the new moon?”

“I am not so sure new moon is still in their plans,” North replies. “Why set up dark spires if ambush is still Plan A?”

“I dunno.”

“And neither do I.”

That’s the most discouraging part, and why you’re not sure if it really feels like last night was a failure, or if you’re just too tired at the moment to enjoy the success. A call rings out from the lower workshop. You join North at the railing in time to see Katherine slink in and swerve through the yetis. She walks to the globe and places her hand on the surface. Many of the lights blink out, and you gasp. North chuckles and pats your arm.

“Do not worry. She is just checking her believers.”

He nudges you downstairs, and after some coaxing and a refresh on your drink, you follow. Katherine waves to you two.

“I should have concrete results by noontime,” North says.

She shrugs. “I think I remained mostly steady. Maybe a few gains in the southern hemisphere where they’d gone dark last year. So, less ‘gain’ and more ‘re-gain.’”

“Every bit helps.” North hauls himself over to the globe, gestures for you to watch, and then places his hand on it. Immediately, small, twinkling lights pop up all over the globe, far more than when Katherine was touching it. She sticks her tongue out at him, and he winks in response. He crooks his finger your direction. “You try.”

“I—I don’t have any—”

“You have great-granddaughter, yes?”

You join him next to the globe and reach out. The cheery lights wink out, and a cold, dark world faces you. Seventy-five years of young immortality looms as you realize how it’s been squandered. No one knows. No one believes. You may as well be shouting from the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

North clears his throat and points to a different area on the globe. You walk around it, running your palm over the playful carvings and inscriptions that litter the sphere. You glow with pride at the cluster hugging the US’s southeast coast. Three lights. Alisah, of course. Jordan, if he's the one who made Alisah believe. The third, though?

“Maybe the author of that story you untangled before?” Katherine suggests.

You search for the name Alisah gave you before. It’s been three-quarters of a year since you talked to her on the beach about that. How time flies. Incredible how much can happen in a whole year.

Another glimmer flickers north of the cluster, in a state you swear you’ve never been to, at least not since your death. The light goes in and out, and you hear the others go, “Hmm…” as they watch it, too. You lift your hand for a moment. The globe nearly blinds you. You touch it again and as soon as you blink away the spots in front of your eyes, the cluster remains. And the rogue light still flashes somewhere halfway up the eastern seaboard.

“There’s another over here!”

You slide next to Katherine, who’s pointing at the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Curiously, there are two other lights in mainland Europe, but the flickering one has your attention. You squint and strain to look at it a little closer.

“That’s not…” you whisper. Katherine leans in next to you. She whips back, eyes wide. “Is it?”

“I think it’s Thera.” She disappears around the structure. “Yeah… Two more lighting up over here. India and Australia.”

“Looks like one in the Antarctic, too,” North says.

If it’s what you think it is, you wonder… While you’re out of their sightlines, you lift your lens. You retch, and the five points shine steadily, strongly. The others cry out. You slam the lens back over your eye and shake off the dizziness, regrouping with North and Katherine.

“So…” you say.

“Maybe it is coincidence.” North shrugs.

“I don’t think so,” Katherine says. “I think we’re seeing exactly what it looks like.”

“Okay, cool, but why?” You regret the strong coffee as your heartbeat speeds up and you start to sweat. “Why would spires show up under my believer thing?”

Katherine and North glance at each other and simultaneously point to your eye and neck. You slap your hand over it. And then you regret slapping it so hard as it pulses.

“You think so?”

“I have no idea how, but it’s literally the only connection you have,” Katherine answers.

“Sounds like ‘how’ is a Pitch question.”

“Ah, yes, about him…” North rubs his head and curses under his breath a few times before saying, “He seemed to be more aggressive last night when we put him away in cage. Indignant? No, more like surprised.”

You sigh and mutter, “Then why’d the silly ass make the deal?”

“I have no idea. We have two weeks to prepare for fearling attack, if that is same direction they will be going, and now we must interrogate him about… _This nonsense!”_ He slams his fist to the side of the globe, and you jump away. He rubs his eyes again. “Sorry. I’m still tired.”

“Maybe that’s Pitch’s problem, too,” you say, backing up a few steps until you have a wide bubble around you. “He just got cranky like the rest of us.”

He shakes his head and taps the globe. Katherine draws her mouth into an awkward line and scoots over to you. She waves her hand to get you to follow her to the stairs leading to the loft.

“I had hoped we’d get one day off to rest,” she says. “But it looks like we’re headed right back to pressing noses to grindstones.”

“Yeah.” You rub the mark on your neck. “You don’t happen to know a way to de-corrupt something like this, do you?”

She shakes her head, looking like she’s just sucked a lemon. “That’s a Pitch question. But I doubt he’d ever bothered to learn the answer to that. He always seemed more concerned with corrupting, full stop.” She takes one more glance at North, who’s now yelling—possibly even cursing—at the globe. A yeti holds their arms out to placate him. “I still kind of want a break, so maybe we should just check in with the Tooth Palace or Warren. Get some fresh air.”

“I could go for that. Just let me grab some stuff.”

“Research materials?”

“Yeah, there’s something about the spires last night that makes me think I’m forgetting something. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, maybe I’d have answers to some of these questions.”

“I think that goes for all of us. Meet you on the balcony in a few, okay?”

You nod and dart back to your room, bursting through the door to find Kidra standing stock-still by the window. They face your direction and flinch as you enter, tilting an ear toward you. They _boof_ once and shift on their legs.

“Hey, buddy,” you say to them, running your fingers through their short, stiff mane as you lean over them. You shuffle through the papers scattered around the window seat, searching for that book. “Ready to go somewhere else for a bit?”

“And a hello to you, love.”

The familiar voice behind you makes you jump, knocking your knee into Kidra’s neck. They jerk from under you, and you tumble down to the floor, tangling in the confusion. You tilt your head over to the door and watch a gray hand reach around the warm wood and push it shut.

Pitch leans against the wall behind the door, open book in hand. He marks his place, closes the book, holds it close to his chest, and raises his gaze to you.

“How?” You extract yourself from Kidra, and they shift to your side. “What…”

He pushes himself from the wall and takes slow, deliberate steps across the room until he’s within two feet of you. You swallow under his stare, less flustered in the usual sense around him and more confused. He looks you up and down, and then furrows his brow.

“You’re unhappy to see me?”

“It’s—” You lower your voice and keep an eye on the door as you stand. “It’s just that you’re not supposed to be here. How did you even get out of your cell?”

“Magic.”

You roll your eyes. “Okay. Next question: where did you get the magic? I thought the shadows took it away?”

“I have always had my ways.”

His face gives nothing away. No hints or clues or subtext. You’ve never seen it so blank and unreadable this far outside of the shadows. You slowly reach out to him, resting your hand on his arm. He looks at it, then back to you.

“Koz,” you start, “if you’ve always been able to do this…”

You don’t actually want to finish that sentence. It’s opens the way to a bunch of possibilities you’d rather not think he’d seriously consider at this point. He takes a moment, micro-expressions flitting over his face in an odd order. He finally says, “Ah,” and places one of his hands over yours.

“Why would I have even tolerated this treatment in the first place?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like your style. Your old style, anyway.”

“It’s complicated, love,” he replies. You frown at the new pet name. He twists his finger in a hanging lock of your hair, and for all your irritation, the light twirling motion and gentle tugs calm you down as you watch it. “But the crux is that I have tried to be patient with the Guardians for your sake, since they were the ones holding you.”

He trails his fingertips down your cheek and cups your chin, tilting it up to face him.

“What about the shadows? I thought you wanted revenge.”

“Revenge is cheap and shallow. It is instant gratification that doesn’t linger long enough to be satisfactory. I have grander visions of the future. With you.”

You reach out and clasp your hand over the book. He resists for a moment, then surrenders it. Lifting your face from his other hand, you sweep past him. Kidra trots beside you, swerving their neck and body so they can keep their focus on him. You flip through the pages. Nothing seems amiss on first glance.

“You need to get back to your cell before they find you here and you really get into trouble,” you say.

He growls and huffs. “I didn’t think I would have to remind you that we are _both_ prisoners here, the Guardians lording over us with the strength of children’s belief in them. Perhaps _you’ve_ just grown used to your privileged mistreatment. Manacles. Cages. Trackers… I have the luxury of being treated exactly as they see me!”

His words pierce through you. The pulse in your body starts overwhelming your senses, and all you can hear is the ominous drumbeat of your heart flying through multiple tempos. Yes, you’re technically still a prisoner. No, you didn’t exactly have much of a choice in participating in the effort last night.

 _You’ve been afraid of them taking advantage of your power ever since they first suggested it._ The thought tickles across your mind. You fight to control your breathing and your rising discomfort. _And what do you have to show for it? They’ve actively kept you away from both Pitch_ and _your son! They could find Jordan in an instant if they actually wanted to._

You blink, and the world blurs. Maybe he has a point. But there’s something you just can’t shake.

“Katherine and North like me and treat me with respect. I’m hardly a prisoner,” you murmur.

“That’s my point. They’ve allowed you just enough ‘freedom’ to lower your guard. If you wanted to leave and go home—you remember your real home, in the forest?—do you think they’d let you go? Do you think they’d even entertain the suggestion?” He brushes his thumb around your eye, erasing the tear, and then he wraps his fingers through yours. “I just want to see you back in your element. The snow is stifling you. You deserve better than being one mistake away from being treated like what they consider you to be, from being thrown in a cage like a disobedient dog."

He rubs a circle over the mark on your neck until you shrug away his hand. The tingle remains for several silent minutes, rippling from one border to the other several times.

"What have they done to you?" he whispers, voice cracking. You lean back into his touch, too tired to object again, wanting to reassure him. "What have they been saying to you to make you distrust me like this?" 

You glance back at the door. Katherine will come looking for you soon. Someone will come looking for you eventually, because they don’t trust you to be on your own too long.

“You don’t have to answer right now,” he says. “I realize it’s a lot, but I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for awhile. Please keep them in mind, love.” He squeezes your hand. “I know one day, we’ll make it out of here. Together. Regardless of whether _they_ achieve their own goals in the process.”

You lean up to him for a kiss, but he just squeezes your hand harder for a second, and steps away from you. Abandonment and then aggressive fire floods through you as you feel yourself flush. He had the nerve to attack you for being hot and cold not three days ago? You storm over to him, but before you can swing him around and chew him out, there’s a knock on your door, and Katherine calls your name.

“Did you find everything you needed? You’re taking a long time.”

Pitch looks from the door to you, gesturing to it and smirking. You push past him and crack open the door, thrusting your head through so that you nearly bonk into hers. She pulls back just in time.

“I’m almost ready. Papers scattered… covered book… y’know.”

You pull back inside the door and look around, but he’s gone. Kidra’s ears stand at attention in the direction he stood three seconds ago. You whistle for them. They shake their body and trot over to you, nearly wedging themself into the doorway at the same time you try to exit.

“Kidra! Wait your turn!” you snap. They pause and press their ears back against their neck, shying backwards until you have room to move. They cock their head.

“Are you okay?” Katherine asks. “Are you still tired—”

“Yes, I am, but what’s new.” You whistle and Kidra slowly heels. Katherine watches you. Before she can say anything else, you roll your eyes and say, “Let’s go. I really need that fresh air.”

“To the Warren?”

“Sure.”

As you lift off from the North Pole, you rub your neck, and then dig in to the resonating itch deep in the dark patch of skin. So deep that a whole minute of scraping at your skin can’t relieve it, and you clench your fists in Kidra’s mane. Their whine is barely audible as they hop across the land, following the white goose far above.


	42. The Missing Half-Hour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has some intense violence in it, and subsequent chapters contain manipulative language

Th night before, halfway through the equinox, Pitch leans over to North, telling him he’ll scout ahead. There’s an unease drifting around that he really doesn’t like, and he especially doesn’t appreciate the idea of the spirit hanging around this island for too long. There are too many shadows. Too much odd magic. A violent wind kicks up, and he raises his eyes to the visible horizon.

It’s there again, looming over the island as they sit around and talk. The giant figure in the fog is watching, and he’s getting the uneasy idea it’s watching him in particular. He hasn’t ruled out that it could be a Nightmare Man, but there’s something a bit more eerie about the figure. If a storm hadn’t been following him from location to location, he might attribute the feeling to nerves, anticipation, anxiety.

To the horror of realizing the mark on the spirit’s neck is spreading.

He thought he’d noticed something when they were alone, but brushed it off since he hadn’t seen their back in awhile. Also, he was a mite preoccupied with the rest of them. But it’s clearly been spreading. Not so quickly as to raise an alarm, but significantly.

“I don’t blame you,” the spirit had said about their disfigurement. There may be a difference between “blame” and “fault,” but it’s a razor thin line, one liable to cut those who try to tread it.

“I have to stop this,” he whispers to himself. A skitter from up ahead catches his attention. His knuckles go white as they grip the hilt of his sword. “As soon as I’m able.”

The soft boots on his feet make little noise as he jogs across the rocky land. He pauses, listening. When a tumble of disturbed rocks reaches him, he pivots, chasing the sounds through the darkness until he enters one of the villages. It’s more of an outpost compared to many of the places he’s seen this night. Barely ten houses and twenty other buildings with dirt and chipping paint line the half-paved, half-gravel streets. But even a town with a population of ten has more than enough nooks, crannies, minds, and hearts for shadows to seep into. The skittering returns, just up ahead, but he’s loath to enter the street. He’s a fair distance away from the others. Any father, and they might chase after him for going out of bounds.

The skittering becomes a chorus, like a whole nest of rats scrabbling between layers of drywall. Pitch takes one step onto the pavement. The world goes silent. The fog in front of him lets up enough for him to see the figure—closer, humanoid—still stationing itself just off the craggy coast. 

“Who, or what, are you?” he calls. “Ally? Friend? Enemy?”

There’s a deep moan as the wind picks up, tossing the figure’s edges so that it looks like twitching tendrils billow from the silhouette. It raises an arm, clenches a human-looking fist, and the first drops of rain fall. In seconds, he can barely see, now fighting against nearly solid walls of rain, an impossible layer of fog, his heavy and soaking clothes, and the darkness itself. He takes another step, and draws his sword.

“Am I actually mad? Do you not really exist?” He sends a silent plea to Selene for help, but the moon is too full for him to see her blind eye open. She doesn’t answer. “Are you like Lady Selene? Are you a primordial force of this planet?”

The figure fades into the storm. He sheathes his sword and darts into the doorway of an abandoned garage to get out of the rain and recover himself. As he wipes the fat drops from his face, a creeping feeling overwhelms him. A shadow shifts in his peripheral vision, but before he can react, it jumps from the wall, wraps around his throat, and drags backwards.

The surprise and force knock all of the air out of Pitch’s lungs, and he instinctively clutches at the tendril crushing his neck. The choking tendril throws him against the cinder block wall, the back of his head crunching against the stone of the darkest corner.

 _It’s been too long. I’m too far away._ He begs the Guardians in his mind to assume he’s skimping out on the truce. To chase after him. _Let them toss me into the golden cage and forget about me for a month, just help me!_

He wrenches one hand away from the shadow around his neck. It tightens where it’s given leverage. His head swims, and his vision starts to tunnel. He gropes down to his belt, hilt slipping between his fingers a few times before he grasps it. He tries to slice the tendril away, but another one shoots from the darkness and ties his hand to the hilt, the hilt to the scabbard, the scabbard to his waist, and it winds itself up his body from there. The crystals on the manacle start to glow, and the weight in Pitch’s chest releases. A third tendril wraps itself around his wrist, smothering the light and dragging his hand to his side.

The shadows in front of him part, and he emerges from the darkness. Pitch does a double-take; a doppelganger stands less than two feet from him.

“Pitch… Black…”

A Nightmare Man. Wearing his face. Pitch kicks out, tries to drag his hands free. This is the one, the one that hurt his spirit.

“Get a little closer, friend, and let me give you what you deserve!” he splutters. The shadows bind him even more tightly. His breathing sounds like the heavy wind forcing its way through the tiny window above him, whistling maniacally. The Nightmare Man inches closer until its toothy, rubbery face is centimeters from his. It opens its mouth.

“Get a little closer. Closer. Get a little friend, closer, friend,” Pitch’s voice spills from the Nightmare man’s mouth, though its lips are desynchronized from the sound. “Give what you deserve, closer.”

It shakes its head, and then slowly says, “Get a little closer, friend, and let me give you what you deserve. Kozmotis Pitchiner.”

The wind dies down a little bit, as does the rain. The Nightmare Man snaps its fingers—does he really look like that? So ashen and gangly and wrong?—and the shadows seep under his collar and manacles.

They squirm against his skin and he wants to vomit. The sensation never used to be so _wrong,_ so foreign to his whole being. They feel familiar, but only in the sense of a half-forgotten secondhand account. They wriggle and squish and ooze, growing and increasing the pressure around his neck and wrists until he thinks he’s going to pop.

And there is a _pop._ Or, more like a _click._

The shadows release him, and Pitch falls to his knees, head swimming the opposite direction as he starts breathing properly again. Barely three seconds later, a new wave of shadows tackles him, scrapes at him, bashes his nose in until he’s coughing up a dark substance. He kicks out blindly, connecting with one fearling only to feel three more latching onto his leg and pinning it down by stabbing it with their claws. He can’t even cry out without choking on a burble in his throat.

“What are you—” he coughs, trying to blink the sweat and tears and rain out of his eyes. Trying to see the face of the creature again. “Why?”

“New… life… Old… life. Your life,” it answers, struggling to keep his voice on. But it’s getting better.

Deft tendrils start unbuttoning his robes. One pops off from the speed, but the Nightmare Man hisses and swats at the tendril. Another replaces it, more careful in undressing him. Soon enough, he’s being restrained as the Nightmare Man peels off his robes, swirls them around himself, and starts the arduous task of re-buttoning himself. His skirts are next, the belt and holster falling to the concrete floor. Then his boots.

The shadows drop him, injured and fully exposed, in the corner and surround him. The Nightmare Man yanks the clothing on and shivers, trying to move the robes and skirts in a more comfortable position. Once it’s satisfied, it holds its arms out, and the shadows cover them. Something clicks into place, the shadows move to its neck, and something else clicks.

Pitch tries to inch himself over to the sword. He punches through the low wall of shadows around him. They punch back, tangling around him and tossing him back to the cinderblocks. His ears ring, and he slumps against the wall, watching the nightmare Man wrap the belt around itself in a hurry.

_This can’t be… I can’t let…_

He can barely finish a coherent thought as he watches the Nightmare Man loom above him, eyes glowing brighter and brighter as his own vision fades in and out. The Nightmare Man reaches down and tips Pitch’s face up to it.

“Speak,” it orders.

Pitch slams his lips into the thinnest line he can manage, though he cannot hide how he trembles. It shakes him so hard his head lolls against a broken stone, scraping his scalp even more.

_“Speak!”_

“What do you want me to say?” He coughs again. “What are you even planning?”

In perfect cadence, pitch, and inflection, it says, “What do you want me to say? What are you even planning?” It licks its lips and thinks for a moment. “Practice. Fooled them once—We have—I have fooled them once. But. Maybe not fool—Perhaps I will not fool them twice.

_“SPEAK. MORE.”_

He’s being replaced. This horrible creature wants to impersonate him. To get close to the spirit. To fool them. A gross thought sweeps across his mind, and Pitch swings at the Nightmare Man, catching it in the side. The response is a small, rough grunt and the Nightmare Man’s replication of his hand shoving him to the ground, not bothering to untwist his limbs before pinning him.

_S-P-E-A-K_

He spits out, trying to turn his head so that it catches it. A small scream escapes him at the strain put on his body. An echo comes back to him from the creature.

 _Selene,_ he begs. _I cannot see you beyond the storm and full moon. Please. Please help…_

There is no response to his trembling form except for the occasional crunch of his skull against the stone. Did he drift off before? Is he speaking? Is he even alive anymore? He tries to lift his hand, but the thought dies halfway down to his fingers. He suddenly sees the dark ceiling again, and the Nightmare Man leans into his contracting field of vision. It sniffs. It snorts. It scoffs. All in his voice and mannerisms. Perhaps it had just wanted to brush up on the source material before moving forward.

He hears the Nightmare Man step over to the entrance. Its form is silhouetted against the doorway as a bolt of lightning strikes somewhere across the street. Burnt rubber and frying ozone fights its way through the rain to what remains of Pitch’s sense of smell. He can feel liquid settling and sliding down the back of his throat with every haggard breath he takes.

“The most pathetic part about this,” the Nightmare Man says, over-enunciating each syllable, “is that we truly did see you as a leader. For awhile. Ironically, you became our jailer again once we tied ourselves to your power.”

“Wh—what?”

“You don’t remember?”

There’s a haunting inhale of breath, and then the shriek of his daughter reverberates from wall to wall, screaming for help so loudly and constantly he thinks she’s going to rip up her throat. After a minute, the desperate scream for help transitions into dark chuckles.

“It took ages to break you. Ages to convince you to open the doors. Ages to creep under your skin and allow you one last hope that she might be alive. That either could still be alive after their fall.”

The shriek hasn’t stopped ringing in Pitch’s ears, and he suddenly sees it. Sees himself guarding the planet prison. Keeping the doors shut to dam the flow of shadows and fearlings and dream pirates back into the Golden Age. They had died recently, his wife and daughter; the shadows had killed them both. That’s why he hesitated at first to open for his daughter’s voice, why he’d needed it to be her voice, but knew it just _couldn’t be._

The Nightmare Man hums. “No… Not after their fall. After their _jump.”_

It had been more than a mile down from the open window to the mangled bodies.

Shadow laughter runs a lap around the abandoned garage, through Pitch’s limp body, and back to the Nightmare Man, transitioning at the last moment to his own, more tangible form of laughter.

“Kill Kozmotis Pitchiner,” the Nightmare Man commands the remaining shadows. “In body, this time. His soul is worthless to us.”

It leaves. The area brightens one degree, but still shudders under the presence of the shadow tendrils and the multitudes of black sand. Pitch has no more strength, no more will to lift his arm. He manages to glance to the high, square window. Through the renewed sheets of rain, through the ever-present fog, through the spots floating across his eyes he glimpses the glare he’s become familiar with over the course of the night.

“Who are you?” he asks, hardly a sound emanating from him.

The shadows spring. Claws, fists, grins. They pummel his still body, dashing every breath he tries to take, stomping on his fingers until he cant feel them anymore, scraping through his exposed skin until the stab wounds reopen. He’s weak. Just like when the shadows broke him back in the Golden Age. He’s too weak to fight them off, and to a certain point, he thinks he doesn’t deserve to try. His eyes flutter.

“I don’t blame you.”

He forces his eyes back open. Regardless if his spirit wants to hear the words, he loves them, and that is enough to live for even one more second. Concentrating, he flips one arm behind him and turns himself over, shoving away the shadows for a second. He hauls himself up onto his hands and knees, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming at the pain of putting weight on his shattered fingers and arms. They’ll snap back into place in a few hours; what’s pain until then?

Pain is having the shadows swarm back over him, sticking over his mouth and nose and refusing to let go even as he drags his fingernails through them, picking so hard he starts grabbing his own skin underneath. Pain is having something hard come down on his knees, rebounding from the concrete floor, and smashing down again. Pain is the wind accelerating so fast and hard that it rockets him from one end of the garage to the other, dragging him out from under the stabbing claws of the fearlings and shadows.

And then the wind stays on the opposite end, where the shadows don’t have a chance to escape from before hail congeals at the ceiling and slice down into them.

The shadow over Pitch’s mouth shivers and falls away, and he gasps as best he can. A miniature tornado hovers at the other wall of the garage, vacuuming up the shadows one by one. He slumps against the wall, panting, watching the entity through the square window in the rafters as it concentrates on the cyclone. As fast as it had formed, it shoots out of the open door and flings the shadows away, dissipating into the night. The now quiet night, save for the rhythmic, soothing sound of raindrops on the corrugated tin roof.

Pitch lays against the wall, panting against the pain. His head drops forward once, twice. He’s so tired. He must stay awake. Must get back to the others. They’ll be looking. He glances at his empty, unshackled wrists.

_I’m free._

The thought stuns him for a long second. They're not going to look for him, and he doesn't have to answer to them anymore. He'll laugh himself into hysterics when shallow panting isn't more than enough to send rockets of agony through him.

He nearly heaves as a whine builds up. It’s a sound so thorough that it burrows against his eardrums, even when he manages to clap his hands over his ears. He suddenly finds himself seeing the world sideways yet again. A figure approaches him. The entity. It’s less obscured, less tall now.

“Thank you,” he coughs out as it approaches. “Thank you, thank you, thank you…”

The entity sighs, a breeze kicking up. The world goes dark. Pitch panics until he feels fabric slowly draping over him, and then the night comes back into focus.

The last thing he sees before exhaustion gets the better of him is a familiar face. But it must be a hallucination. She’s dead. His wife is dead, has been dead. But her visage looks down at him, pity and disgust warping her face.

“You’re welcome.”


	43. Bugged

A single sunbeam touches down on Pitch’s skin. He jolts and tries to move away, still unable to shake the learned instinct of avoiding the light. He opens his eyes, blinks a few times, and suddenly remembers what happened the night before. He leaps to his feet, and then quickly falls down again, gathering up under the large blanket covering his naked body.

The dizziness is far less severe now. He flexes one of his hands, and while there’s still a lot of pain and stiffness, it seems the bones have at least reset. It’ll be hell to grab something, but doable with enough determination. And as he sorts through his memories and remembers what exactly left him here in such a state the night before, Pitch overflows with the right kind of determination: vengeance.

His mind explodes with plans to kill the Nightmare Man, to slice his way through waves and waves of fearlings, to demolish each and every one of their damned spires. He mutters to himself as he stands and wraps the fabric around himself, tying it off where he can. His knees shake, and once he’s secured it around himself to his best ability, he leans against the wall again, taking a minute to catch his breath, feeling the tightness in his chest and stomach with every inhale and exhale, wondering how many ribs are broken. After a minute, he can’t keep himself up anymore and he collapses back to sitting.

“I have two weeks,” he says, the realization dousing him like cold water. “I have to get to the Pole in two weeks.”

He’s in Greece; hopping his way through the rest of Europe will be the easy part. It’s such a tiny stretch of land. But how to get those last few thousand miles? He shakes his head. He can worry about that when he gets there. He has to get there to begin with.

He attempts to stand again, leaning on the wall for support, stopping every so often to rest, catch his breath, and relieve the pressure on his hands. Finally, he’s back on his own two feet. Wobbly, but keeping himself up. He takes a step. Rest. Another step. Balance, rest.

There’s murmuring outside. Pitch focuses on the doorway. Light filters through the small opening, beyond which he can see a light haze of fog still settling over the area. He briefly flicks his eyes over to the window. The entity isn’t there, but if the temperature and brightness of the sun are any indication, this fog is not the work of natural forces.

“Shh! I swear he’s in there.”

A child’s voice hisses through the opening, and a gaggle of short silhouettes crowd the doorway. Pitch tries to press himself back into the darkest parts of the garage, but he moves too quickly and stumbles over his own feet. He cracks the back of his head on the stone, wondering how many hits an immortal skull can take before it stops mending itself. The voices gasp at the noise.

“Ok, if you’re so sure, go in there and see!”

“Uh… I already did! You’re not afraid, are you?”

“N-no! I’m not afraid, I just think you’re lying. Why would the boogeyman be here?”

Pitch sighs, takes a deep breath, and calls out, “If any of you are going to enter and gawk at me, please do it soon. I have things to do.”

There’s two screams and a thunder of footsteps away from the door. Somewhere down the road, the two voices accuse the other of trickery. Pitch snorts. Children never seem to change, no matter how mobile the technology gets. He groans and yet again attends to the chore of hauling himself up. This time, he crawls up the wall with his hands to support himself.

“Are you really the boogeyman?”

He tenses to stop himself from overreacting and having to start all over again. He leans his shoulder against the wall and turns to face the child, startled at how close she actually is. She can’t be more than nine years old. As she waits for an answer she kneels down, sifts through some of the dirt, and places a beetle onto her shoulder. It’s then he notices the ladybug print on her shirt and the lacy purple spider on her headband.

_How wonderful to have found an a sense of fashion so young._

“Are you?”

“I… Well…” He manages to steady himself on his legs. His knees are no longer fully shattered, but he can feel the bones digging against each other. “Do you think I am?”

She points. “My friends said you were.”

“So perhaps I am.” He takes one step forward. She sidesteps in front of him. The beetle on her shoulder creeps to her collar. “Can I help you, child?”

“My name’s Rina.” She holds out her hand. The beetle flies to her outstretched finger. She chastises it, moves it back to her shoulder, and holds her hand out again.

“Charmed, Ms. Rina.”

He takes another step forward. She cuts him off again, insistently shoving her hand to him. He sighs, takes her tiny hand between his fingers, and shakes once before insistently moving past her.

“You didn’t tell me your name.”

“I thought they told you I’m the boogeyman. What else could it be?”

His time is getting shorter and shorter the more he dawdles. Besides, he knows nothing about entertaining children. He barely knows how to scare them without his shadows enhancing the performance. The boys from the previous night are prime examples—scared only on reputation, but even the eldest was less terrified and more protective. If he could still tap into the wells of fear within people, maybe he could have broken his barriers down a bit, tossed him back to feeling like a helpless baby. Instead, Pitch resorted to bad theater.

“So, you don’t have a real name?”

She places another beetle on her other shoulder and prods a rolled pillbug in her palm. Pitch glances around his feet, wondering where she’s even finding these things.

“Technically—” she over-pronounces the word and holds up a finger, “my name is MA-rina, but I like just Rina better.”

“Well, ‘Just Rina,’ I’m afraid I mustn’t linger. I have to head far north very quickly. Or else…”

“Or else what?” He feels he should have expected this reaction. Her eyes go wide and she leans into him, whispering, “Does it have to do with the laser beam last night? From the cinder cone park?”

That piques his interest, and he focuses on her. She trembles, and her wide eyes look up at him, looking for answers. It suddenly occurs to him that she is such a small, young child. Despite her odd talent for finding bugs, she’s only nine. A prime target for him barely three months ago. Now, all of her questions make him nauseous as he can’t help but notice echoes of his daughter in his memory dream.

Groaning and regretting, he lowers himself to one knee, then the other when that pose is too strenuous. He settles back and looks Rina, now on her level.

“Tell me about the beam last night.”

“Tell me your name.”

Gone is the worry. The sharp glint of victory shines in her eyes now, and he admits he walked himself right into this.

“All right, all right. You can call me…” He freezes for a moment. He licks his lips, wondering what the right name for him even is anymore? He glances away, thinking, and a wind kicks up, swirling away a few layers of fog. “Go ahead and call me… Call me Kozmotis.”

Rina tries it out on her tongue a few times. It takes a few tries before she gets it, and once she says it correctly, she looks so proud of herself.

“All right, Kozmotis!”

He flinches as she says it again. He’s only approved of the spirit saying it so far, and it’s always sounded lovely coming from them. Like a secret name kept between them. He can’t unsay it now, though.

Rina comes close again, lowering her voice and getting serious. “So, last night, there was fog and rain, even though the weather guy said it wouldn’t rain. And lately there have been weird shadows moving around all the cities. I have a friend who lives in a bigger city on the other end of the island, and she texts me about how there are _loads_ of shadows now!

“Last night, a huge beam zapped up, and my friend said it came from over by the cinder cone. But I felt it and saw it, too. It shot right into space, I think.” She shivers. One of the beetles finally takes off for more stable ground. Rina finishes, “It was scarier than anything I’ve ever felt before.”

Pitch’s stomach roils at the thought of the spire shooting anything beyond the atmosphere. He has no context to work from with just this, but between the Nightmare Man impersonating him and the shadow spire’s beam, it’s an understatement to say that things are bad.

“Hmm…” He rises, and it takes most of his effort. Rina holds out her hand, and after failing once, Pitch takes it and lets her help him stand. He straightens himself out once more. “This beam event is something I and my… compatriots have been looking into for a bit. This is why I need to get to the north as soon as possible.”

“The north of the island?”

“No. Of the world.”

_“The North Pole?”_

He shrugs. “Yes.”

“With the _Guardians?”_

He sighs heavily. “Yes.”

Rina stares up at him for a second, mouth hanging open. Pitch ducks his head and draws up his shoulders, avoiding her gaze. “I have barely two weeks to get there, and my first hurdle is getting off this island, so if you can kindly direct me to the ferry—”

“My mom’s a pilot! She’s flying to Milan tomorrow.”

He uncoils. The little girl’s eyes shine up at him once more, a grin across her face. Children can yell at each other from thousands of miles away, befriend each other from different time zones, spread rumors and lies so easily with the tap of a finger. But get them excited, and they will undoubtedly eagerly participate in life as they have for all of existence. Though perhaps, due to his large absence in the last half-century, a few of them have lost their sense of self-preservation.

“Why would you help the boogeyman get to the North Pole?” he asks. “Haven’t you heard the stories about me?”

“Yeah. Kind of. They’re a little vague sometimes. But you just talked to me and didn’t scare me. You scared off the older kids.”

“Sorry about your friends.”

“They’re not good friends. I just have no one else to play with.” She sighs with a casual gravity as if to say, “That’s that.” No, children never fully change, in every respect of what that entails.

The cogs whir and tick in his head. Her mother’s a pilot, heading to somewhere that is at least more north of here, heading somewhere that will take exponentially less time than going by foot or ferry. And then he can just keep doing that until he gets as far as he can by air. Suddenly, the journey seems far more doable.

The downside is that he has to wait through the night, despite every fiber of his being demanding he take off immediately. He limps in a circle, pacing as he thinks. His muscles and joints stretch and pull against each other, and for as much as he tries to ignore the pain, he’s sweating and panting after only a few minutes.

“Marina!”

The voices of the two other children echo up the road. One of them leans into the garage. They start to sneer and then catch sight of Pitch. The child ducks back out of the threshold and shoves the other in.

“What the heck!” he shouts. He freezes, then waves his hand at Rina. “Get your butt over here, stupid, that’s the boogeyman!”

“So what,” she says, squatting and poking through the ground again. For once, her tone is flat and colorless.

“‘So what?!’ He’ll eat your soul or something!”

She plants herself on the ground and traces her finger in the dirt, head in her other hand. Pitch clears his throat, and the boy scampers back a few steps.

“You forgot the magic words, I believe,” he says. “Regardless, she seems to be content right now. What do you need Ms. Rina for?”

The other child runs back in, grabs at their friend’s arm, and tries to drag them out of the garage. They beg him to leave, to go back to their house and play some sort of video game. But the boy is reluctant. He licks his lips and glances at Rina again. She catches him, and curls up, holding her arm over her head and turn it so that she’s not looking. Pitch takes a few steps toward the other children who root themselves to the spot and start sobbing. He looms over them.

“What exactly have you done to Rina?”

“Nothing, we swear!” the one child cries.

“Don’t even try to lie to me.”

“She’s stupid!” the boy says. “She’s always getting gross and dirty and tossing bugs on my bed when she stays over!”

Pitch grins his worst, even knowing it doesn’t have quite the same effect in the daytime. “Have you considered that, perhaps, not all of the bugs are from her? I myself enjoy the creeping insects of the world.” He slowly reaches down and coaxes the beetle from Rina’s shoulder onto his finger. He lifts it up the them, and they both squirm away. “You’re not afraid, are you? Of such a tiny, tiny creature?”

He blows on the beetle and it immediately takes off, buzzing straight into the boy’s face. He shrieks and slaps his face, tripping over his friend, who also starts screaming unintelligibly. Pitch laughs, injecting a cackle of malice into it. He can’t feast on their terror, but the sight of two would-be toughs swatting imaginary creatures off themselves and stumbling over themselves is reward enough. A satisfactory encore to his performance.

As the children run out again, one of them turns around and yells, “D-don’t be late for dinner, Marina!”

Pitch feints a step, and they rush off. He takes a moment to collect himself, and then something barrels into his legs, nearly tossing him off-balance and redoubling the pins and needles sensation. Rina squeezes her arms around him. She trembles, and there’s a growing patch of wetness where she buries her face into his makeshift tunic.

“Rina?”

She tugs tighter. He slowly wedges his hand between them and pushes her away. She has quite the grip, but eventually she gives and backs up, running a hand over her leaking nose. He cringes inwardly as the viscous slime leaves a trail on her skin.

“That was cool, Koz.”

“Please. Kozmotis. The whole thing.”

She nods. “My mom is away a lot, and I have to stay with them when she’s gone. They’re the only ones around here who hang out with me.”

“They should develop better taste in hobbies,” he mutters. “What time tomorrow is your mother flying out of here?”

“About two o’clock pm,” Rina replies. More than a full day. He grunts in frustration. She says, “Are you going to sit here until then?”

“What else can I do?”

She squats down, bats her hand out, and stands with her fist clenched. She grins and opens it. An iridescent beetle sits, a bit stunned, on her palm. “You can help me look for bugs if you want.”

His body could use a little more loosening up if he’s about to start this kind of journey. With any luck, he’ll be off the continent within the week. He goes clammy at the mere thought of the Nightmare Man being in the same thousand-mile radius as his spirit, but he shoves his worry into a small box, sealing it with a reminder that he’s supposed to be incarcerated for most of the next fortnight. His deal proves prescient, though he still regrets rushing the decision.

Pitch flexes his arms and legs, grunting against the stiff pain. Rina stares up at him.

“Sure, why not?” he says.

She grabs his arm and drags him out to the hills. The next few hours are filled with her rattling off dozens of scientific names that make his head swim, facts about bugs from the simple number of legs they have to obscure differences between two beetles he swears are the same species. She carries on as the night draws near, and all the while, Pitch watches the coastline, squinting through the insistent fog at the entity staring back at him.

That night, Rina whines until her mother and her friend set a place for him, and he delights in staring at the other children throughout the meal. They both choke down their dinner and excuse themselves as soon as they can, shutting themselves up in their room and stuffing a towel under the crack in the door.

As Rina settles down for the night, she says, “After you’re done at the North Pole, will you come back to visit?”

He hums. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that…”

“Please?”

“I’ll do my best.”

She kneels on her bed and thrusts out her pinky. “Promise?”

He grimaces. He really shouldn’t break her heart; that’s what to two idiots in the other room are for. _On the other hand,_ he thinks, _I need her mother to get to the airport. What’s the harm in humoring her?_

He reaches his own out, and she smiles. He gets most of the way there, and then a brief pang of phantom nostalgia seizes up in his chest. He sighs and places his palm over her hand.

“I am not going to make you a promise I don’t think I can keep,” he says softly.

She slumps back into her bed, tosses the blankets over her, and rolls away from him. He calls her name a few times, but she doesn’t move. Finally, he says, “I’ll stand guard outside your room to make sure those two don’t dump anything into your bed. Good night, Rina.”

“Good night, Kozmotis,” comes the yawning reply.

He stands outside of her room all night, glaring at the two older children every time they slink down the hallway to go to the bathroom, and again as they zip back to bed. He needn’t say any words, just let his glowing eyes do all the talking for him.

It’s been awhile since he’s had so much fun.


	44. Materially Immaterial

Even your forest isn’t this green.

As your eyes adjust to the dim light of the tunnel, you can appreciate just how saturated it is in nature. It’s warm, too, and you nearly cry at being surrounded by normal temperatures again. It’s still a little drier than where you’re from, but that’s almost a plus. Almost. The longer you live, the more drowning in humidity becomes part of the charm of your home. Especially if the extra moisture creates extraordinary, near-daily summer thunderstorms.

You scuff your foot against the floor of the tunnel, where grasses and mosses vie for dominance. In fact, it’s a three-way battle between them and the wildflowers. You just manage to stop yourself from laying down and rolling around to revel in the familiar scents of greenery, following just behind Katherine as she coaxes her goose through the large, yet tight, tunnel. After the third time she has to pause and coo at her pet, the impatience creeps back into you. As does the irritation left over from Pitch’s appearance.

You have no intention to tell Katherine or the others about it. You neither want that sort of attention, nor do you want to bring a harsher punishment down on him. That certainly wasn’t the most ideal interaction with him, but you’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt after last night. Even North has lost his composure during this whole ordeal.

 _But what an idiot, leaving his cell._ You try to dig at the itch in your shoulder for the thousandth time. You fail for the thousandth time. _Definitely need to ask him how he hid his powers, though._

There’s some shuffling up ahead, and then you hear Bunny’s voice, “Heya, Katherine! Didn’t expect to see ya so soon.”

You catch up to her as she greets him. Bunny turns to you, smiling, and then he recognizes you. He frowns, gives a curt nod, and focuses exclusively on Katherine and her goose. He shushes Kailash a few times, sneaking greens to her, and then leads her forward with the promise of more. She gives a happy honk and chases him. Bunny laughs and dashes down the tunnel, Katherine and you in pursuit.

It eventually opens up to a bright hub, orderly rows and columns of even more tunnels lining the walls. Egg statues and tiny eggs with feet march in scraggly lines in and out of the different areas.

“No, no, don’t eat that!”

Bunny grapples Kailash’s beak shut just as she’s reaching toward a large tangle of vines. Katherine runs over to help him, yanking the reins until the goose relents and settles down a few yards away. She fluffs her feathers and hisses for a moment. Katherine scoffs, rolls her eyes, and chastises her.

You rotate slowly, taking in the grandeur of the room, the scale of the operation. Bunny dashes by you.

“Hey, Bunny!” you call. He skids to a stop and glares back at you. You deflate. “Um… Nice place.”

“Yup,” he replies. He takes a small moment to pat Kidra before resuming his rush.

“Don’t worry about him,” Katherine says. “He’s got a few complicated feelings about this whole situation.”

“Don’t we all?”

She hums in agreement.

Bunny does a lap around the hub area and finally makes his way back to you. Speaking to Katherine, he says, “Haven’t had a chance to go up and take a look-see at that spire, yet. Almost don’t wanna.”

“Seeing is believing, of course.” Katherine winks.

“Don’t start that this early.” Bunny wags his finger. More seriously, he adds, “I can absolutely believe the shadows doin’ somethin’ like this. It’s one of their predictable quirks.”

“Yeah. Anyway, we’re here—” Katherine loops her arm through yours, dragging you forward. He sneaks a glance and then averts his eyes. “—to take a look around and assess what needs doing before the new moon.”

“Appreciate the thought, but I’ve got it covered. Don’t need your help today.”

Katherine cranes her neck around, watching the barely controlled chaos of the uneven lines, the high piles of eggs just laying around, and Bunny’s further increasing scruffiness. He tries to surreptitiously smooth down his fur and straighten his whiskers. He gestures to you and changes the subject.

“Why’d ya have to bring them, though?”

“They need to understand exactly what we’re protecting. Also, we needed some time away from the Pole.”

“I don’t trust ‘em.”

“I’m literally _right here,”_ you say. He finally locks eyes with you and sniffs.

“Yeah, so? You’ve chosen your side.”

“The Guardians.”

“You chose the Boogeyman,” he spits. “For as solid a head ya got on your shoulders, you chose someone who’s done unforgivable things. What’s stopping you from waltzin’ off and doin’ whatever you want if you ever leave the Pole? Especially if he’s half of you’re conscience.”

‘If' _you leave the Pole. If, he says. Only ‘If,’ not even considering 'when.'_ It knocks around in your head for a second. Pitch’s words sidle up right beside it, gently wrapping around you as your anxiety spikes. Katherine swats at Bunny and tells him to knock it off.

“Look,” he concedes. He reaches out and lightly places a paw on your shoulder. He attempts a smile, but gets no better than a menacing grimace. “I don’t think you yourself are too far gone. You’ve done pretty horrible things in your past, but you can bounce back from it. You’ve made a good start, if we ignore the Boogeyman thing.”

He pauses, looks behind him, then grasps your shoulder and starts pushing you toward one of the many exits. You dig your heels in, and Kidra lets out a warning bleat. He grunts, but stops short of accidentally shoving you to the ground.

“I just wanna show you the Source for a sec.”

You shrug his hand away. He scoffs and motions for Katherine, turning so he can bolt down the corridor on all fours as you trudge behind. He dashes for a bit, then looks back to make sure you’re still following. Once the busy sounds of the hub fade away, he stands and keeps pace with you.

“My predecessor built these tunnels.” He runs a finger over a large, mossy egg structure. “He started the egg thing, too. Was a bit obsessed with the shape. Never quite understood the appeal to his level, but it’s too late to change the aesthetic. He was a top-notch chocolatier, too, and I learned everything I know from him.”

He tosses an empty smile at you. Too little, too late. You blink in response, and he drops the pretense.

“I’m not like most Pookas—”

“What?”

“Ah, yeah. Pooka is the name of my race. See, I’m actually from—”

“Space, yeah. Jack told me you were an alien.”

He mumbles, “Not the word I prefer, but sure.”

“Look at that.” You return his cold grin. “You and Pitch have something in common.”

He glares at you and shuts up for the next few minutes. Katherine shifts so that she’s between you two, but that doesn’t stop the rising, battling tensions. About ten minutes later, you have to slow down as the plant life starts growing denser, fuller, larger. Bunny sweeps away a wall of leafy vines and scoots around a series of three-foot wide flowers. A glow emanates from smaller blossoms, the light beams illuminating pollen drifting around like dust motes.

Your neck starts to ache and tingle. A gross, creeping sensation riles up, the worst you’ve felt so far. You take a moment to focus on your breathing. A coughing fit, courtesy of the pollen haze, takes your mind off of it long enough for Katherine to drag you into the next area.

The room is gently rounded, chips and divots and swirling lines texturing the earthy walls. At least, that’s the impression you get from what few patches you can see. The tall, roughly cylindrical room stretches so far up that you can’t see the ceiling. Vines, mosses, and thick stalks and stems create a vibrant forest of life surrounding the walls and criss-crossing above you. You lose track of which direction you came from. The threshold either stops existing as soon as you cross it, or the flora conceals it too well to find it on your own. It’s effectively an enclosed space. No ready escape. The room is barely thirty feet wide, but you can see yourself getting hopelessly lost in the plants. You grab Kidra’s mane and Katherine’s hand and let her lead you in.

You join Bunny as he looks down a pit so well-hidden that you can’t see it until you’re on top of it. A shifting glow, like rainbows thrown from prisms, decorate his face and fur despite no such light pouring from the pit. As you look down with him, a warm calm slowly comes over you. It starts at the crown of your head and drips down, reminding you of a comforting hot shower after a cold day. It soaks through your entire being, chasing away your irritation and anxiety. You lean a little further, but Katherine and Bunny grip you and pull you back.

“Trust me,” he says, “you don’t wanna come in contact with what’s down there.”

“I thought the Source of Spring would be benevolent.”

Bunny shrugs. “It’s not alive. But its effects are pretty effective… in small, diluted doses. Spring seeps into the earth itself and distributes out from there.” He takes a deep breath, and what he says next barely smooths over a crack in his voice. “This is why I can’t go back.”

“To?”

“My home. Space. Whatever ya wanna call it. Even if there turns out to be hundreds, thousands, millions of Pookas hidin’ somewhere out there, I’ve made my choice to stay here, protect Spring, and guard hope throughout the world.” He catches your eye, and you’re struck with a sincere, genuine stare of longing and loss. “There was a battle. I was there with my predecessor, my mentor. Only one who could stand my weird, very un-Pooka behavior, much as he tried to tame it into something more like it.

“The Pookas almost won that battle. Almost. I was the only one who made it to the planet. Manny made me a Guardian not long after, and I’ve been doin’ this ever since. Gives me purpose, and I’ll be damned if I slip up now and let the shadows corrupt all this.”

You gaze back into the warm abyss, restraining against the impulse to reach for it. After a few minutes of looking, less calm and comfort emanates from the pit. A wave of something primordial, unknown, uncanny pulses out, settling around you all like a thick spray of radiation.

“Best not to stay much longer,” Bunny says, tugging you back and leading you through the thick plants.

The tunnel is brighter on the way back. You turn your hand over in front of you and realize your fingertips are glowing a little. A similar brightness settles into Katherine’s cheeks and digits as well, and there’s a light dusting running through Kidra’s foreclaws.

“It’ll fade in a little bit,” Katherine says. “But the Source is very, very potent.”

“And very fragile,” Bunny adds. His bright green eyes pierce the dim now. “Knock it outta whack even a little, and the whole planet suffers til it rights itself.”

“How long does that take?” you ask.

“Depends,” he replies. “Could be one year, could be a millennium.”

That lingers with you for the rest of your stay. Potentially a thousand years of the planet being off-kilter from just one bit of corruption. You situate yourself out of the way on Kailash, cracking open the book and struggling to focus as Bunny and Katherine shoot the breeze easily for a few more hours.

You give up on reading the chapter you’ve been stuck on for a week and flip back through all the marked places and your notes instead. Half the scrawlings you need to re-copy into something actually legible, but the last month’s worth of studying swarms back into your mind. Most of it is obvious, practical advice for casting external magic or reaching for innate magic. There’s a lack of how-to knowledge in the dense passages, though. Theory is the name of the game with this book. You do refresh yourself on some exercises, flicking your power on and off your fingertips a few times before exhaustion threatens to knock you out again. You resort to plain old reading after that.

“… every single one of said pockets of resistance was frustratingly just off from a junction of magic currents or natural phenomenon that could go towards explaining either the odd geographical makeup or presence of the land.”

You blink the blurriness out of your dry eyes and reread the passage. You remember this one. Spectroscopy, or something like that is what you associate with it. Rereading it one more time, North’s half-frustrated words from last night paraphrase their way back to you, “Why not just build the evil spire on the magic-riddled volcano right over there?”

Five miles west of Uluru, a very sacred site. Just off the path, yet settled between a temple and a cliff. Antarctica. Halfway up the eastern seaboard. Unexpected locations.

“Guys?” you call, trying to process this. “Guys?!”

They look up from where they’ve been directing the lines. You slide down the goose’s back, dash past Kidra, and nearly trip over yourself as you avoid squishing the eggs. By the time you get up to them, Bunny looks even less impressed and ready to turn back to work.

“Look at this!”

Katherine leans in, skimming through the passage and notes. “Oh!” she says.

That causes Bunny to pay attention. “What is it?”

Katherine starts reading and he shakes his head as the torrent of words and archaic syntax pours out of her. He holds his hands out to slow her down.

“This thing my father wrote seems to match up with where the spires are placed,” she explains.

“Could this be why no one noticed they were being built til it was too late?” you ask. “I imagine it’s hard to ignore darkness building something three blocks away from you, unless you just can't see it.”

“Maybe…” Katherine thinks for a second, then her eyes widen. She reaches out and grabs Bunny’s fur and your sleeve. “That fifth one in North America.” She flicks her eyes over something she’s remembering. You and Bunny shrug. “Could that have been Burgess? We haven’t exactly been able to check in on it for, what, two to three months?”

“You said ya saw that freaky monster in the one in Australia?” Bunny taps the rocky wall with his claws. You nod. “And ya first saw it in Burgess?”

“If there is a spire there, could that have summoned it?” Katherine shakes her head. “No, no it was surrounded with a different sort of energy when it appeared…”

A vague memory, one you’re not thrilled to revisit, flashes back to you. The cage. Absolute darkness. Trying to tame the shadows with a stab of magic fresh off your victory in the dream. The shadow takes off with it. Then it appears, wearing Pitch’s face. You flick your magic to your fingers again and tap a nearby egg. It freezes, shivers, and then your magic crackles around it.

“Aw, c’mon!” Bunny yells, scooping it up and trying to brush away the iridescence.

“Did the magic around the monster do that?” you ask. Katherine nods. “Then that’s something I… had a hand in that day. Sorry.”

Katherine starts pacing. “So, how does this all connect?”

“One,” you say, “The spires are built on sites that are off the magic radar, so to speak. Two, one of those spires is most likely in Burgess, and has probably been there for awhile. Three, the monster I inadvertently created was in one of the spires for some reason—”

“And unless I was hallucinating last night,” she continues, “the monster shot up through that beam from the spire.”

You remember the other beams that were drawn towards the one on Thera. Four of them, gathering energy together before the central beam shot out. “What if it’s an array? Like cell towers?”

“I had wondered if it was some sort of signal.”

“If that’s so, who the heck are they communicating with?” Bunny taps his foot.

“Judging by the direction of the beam, outer space,” you reply. “Or they were launching the monster there?”

“Why?”

“That I don’t know.” You glance between them; they look even more disturbed than before you got here. “We’re getting into stuff Pitch is more qualified to answer.”

“If you even trust his words.” Bunny spits on the ground, just missing a freshly painted egg. You clench your fists and stomp right up to him.

“I get it. You hate him. You say so every single time you get the chance!” This is too much, and you don’t care if it’s just being tired or the frustrating mix of new answers and zero solutions. “But you could chill for the little bit of time you have to work with him!”

Bunny shoves past Katherine, who tries to wedge herself between you two again. He lifts his foot and kicks you in the center of your chest. You fly back a few yards, tumbling across the grass, flowers, and scattered stones. A large rock stops your momentum, hard, and you haul yourself up, coughing and gasping for air. There’s a growl from the side, and then Katherine yells for Kailash. You sit up to see the giant goose pinning Kidra down mere feet from Bunny. They snap their jaws at him a few times until it becomes clear they’re stuck.

Bunny walks over to you and squats down. “I was really hopin’ you’d understand after all that talk. Yeah, I’ll work with him for now. But I’m not gonna ‘chill’ about it.” He motions for you to look at him, his glare a complex mix of anger and pity and disgust. “And I don’t ever wanna see ya in my home again unless you’re ready to wake up and acknowledge that he had his chance to do good, and he squandered it.”

You stand, head over to Kidra, calm them enough that they’re released, and start heading out the exit without even waiting for Katherine. The itch returns, but you ignore it. You can’t exactly blame Bunny for what he did, what he said, but you’re so sick and tired of people saying shit about Pitch in front of you. It’s exhausting.

Behind you, you hear him call out, “I do mean that! Come back when you’re ready to face the truth, and no sooner!”

You give in to the itch and scratch until you feel a layer of skin scrape away. Katherine catches up to you—can’t forget your captor’s escort, can you—and you two head off. You follow her, not caring at the moment if she leads you back to the Pole or straight into the ocean. At the back of your mind, you hear Pitch’s soft, sympathetic sigh


	45. Between Liminal Spaces

Rina insists on going bug hunting one more time before her mother leaves. After she wolfs down breakfast, she drags Pitch outside and starts turning over every stone in her path. Beetles, flies, spiders—if it crawls, it doesn’t escape her notice. He follows, legs stiffer than the day before. Standing still for an entire night wreaked havoc on the healing process, but he did catch one of the older children try to exit their room around three am. They didn’t get over their threshold, but they didn’t slink back in fast enough for the bag in their hands to escape his notice. Nevertheless, Rina woke up refreshed and unbothered, and the older children almost fell asleep into their breakfast bowls from their well-deserved insomnia.

He wanders a few steps behind her, watching the area around his bare feet to make sure he’s not about to step on something. Especially not something that will sting him. Any poison should be a mere inconvenience, but pain is pain. Speaking of which, he finds places to sit down and relieve his aching legs and back during her continuous lectures.

It’s overcast yet again, but the storm entity keeps itself hidden, even as the rising sun burns away layers of the magical haze. He can feel it watching, however, and he wonders if it’s conspiring to keep his legs and back aching just a tad longer by messing with the barometric pressure.

“Ooh!” Rina squeals, close to ten o’clock. “Kozmotis! Come look at this!”

He grunts and makes his way over to where the girl squats next to a small outcrop. She holds a football-sized stone in both hands above her head, arms trembling and starting to lean from the weight. Pitch takes it out of her hands without thinking and tucks it against his waist. Half a second later, he wonders what compelled him to do so, but that thought is drowned out as he sees what she’s pointing at less than a foot and a half away.

A scorpion. Tail poised to strike.

Before Rina can say anything, Pitch wraps his arm around her and drags her back, throwing the stone at the creature. It lands on top of it with a muffled crunch.

“NOOOOO!” Rina throws his arm off and rushes back over to the rock, lifting it back up. She sighs in relief as the scorpion slowly skitters away.

“Rina!” He grasps her shoulder and tries to tug her away, but she slips from it and rounds on him.

“Don’t hurt it! It’s just a scorpion.” If she hadn’t been holding the rock he swears she’d be wagging a finger at him.

“Yes. It’s a scorpion. It’s poisonous. It might’ve bit you.”

“First of all, it’s _venomous,_ not _poisonous!”_ she corrects. “Secondly, it would’ve _stung_ me, not _bit_ me.”

He blinks, not having the time or energy to explain that there’s no appreciable difference between what he’s saying and what she’s yelling.

“But that’s why you should be wary of them,” he says. “They hurt. It’s what they do.” She drops to her knees and follows the bug at a small distance. He sighs. “Perhaps you haven’t heard the story, then.”

He recites the tale of the scorpion and the frog. Rina starts out ignoring him, but by the end, she’s frowning.

“Why didn’t they just work together and build a bridge over the water?” Pitch stammers at her glare. “Or the frog could’ve helped the scorpion find something else to ride on, like a leaf or piece of bark. They could’ve used vines to tie it to the frog and the frog could’ve just pulled it across without having to put the scorpion on its back. Or—”

“I think you’re missing the point of the story. It’s about scorpions being inherently dangerous; it’s in their nature.” He frowns and mutters under his breath, “Like it is for some people.”

“People aren’t scorpions,” she says. “Scorpions only sting when they’re scared or hungry. People are mean just because. And they only listen to people who are meaner than they are.”

She could be venomous herself with how she says that. Pitch actually backs up a step or two, just in case. Rina sighs after a second and sits down.

“If that’s how you say scorpions are, though, I should be more like them. Then maybe people won’t bother me.”

 _Two specific people,_ he thinks, glancing back towards the small village. He kneels next to Rina and pats her back, saying, “With some people, it doesn’t matter if you become a scorpion or stay a person. They’ll always find ways to get to you.”

“Why?”

 _Power. Self-defense. Performance._ Pitch knows all the reasons people tell themselves to justify bullying and worse. They haven’t changed in hundreds of years, only the languages humans say them in. How to explain that to her?

“Because they don’t know any better,” he lies.

She sniffs, but seems to accept the reasoning. “Do you have to go?”

“Yes. This isn’t my home. I don’t belong here.”

“Neither do I.”

There’s a soft growl of thunder in the distance, effectively ending the bug hunt. Rina scampers back to clean up before the ride to the airport. Her mother, rushing with last-minute packing and babysitter instructions, barely manages to control herself every time Rina demands accommodations for Pitch. He watches her flip from smiling kindly to rolling her eyes to anger at herself once she turns away from her daughter, right before she walks through him. Nevertheless, they all pile in a van and set off, the back row reserved just for him.

It’s a comparatively short ride to the airport, but with his limbs still aching, it would have taken an extra day once he found out its location. Perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered, as there’s a mad dash through security for Rina’s mother to get to work on time, and he can only bite his tongue and pray nothing has re-shattered.

They part at the gate. Rina tries to hold her mother hard enough that she stays, and when that fails, she latches onto him. She refuses to move when he once again tries to wedge his arm between them, letting go only when her mother calls her name.

“Be good, okay?” She kisses her daughter on her forehead one more time.

Just as her babysitter starts leading her away, just as the tears start, Pitch clears his throat. Rina locks herself in place. The older kids, dragged along as they were not yet old enough to be left alone, look on warily.

“About earlier… Often, people are mean to others… because of many reasons. Usually because it’s easy to do.” He forces himself to watch her heart break. To see her confusion rise. “Being kind—realizing that you can be kind—is very, very difficult. That doesn’t mean these people are beyond hope. But you should know when to stoke that hope in someone, and when to let them go and figure it out for themselves.”

“What if they’re my friends?”

“Friends don’t hurt you, not intentionally. And friends will go out of their way to apologize if they do.”

Her face starts to tip, brows angling downward, frown tightening. A giggle escapes one of the older children, and Rina flinches. Pitch silences them with one look, contemplates for one second, and then slowly extends one hand, pinky out. Rina’s eyes glitter.

“I will come back,” he says. He’s not sure when, not sure he’d be let out alone, if by chance the Guardians did believe him. _Joke's on them, an escort of the Guardians would only enchant her further._ “I p-pr-” He takes a deep breath. “I promise you that I will return once my job at the North Pole is done.”

She links her own finger around his. “And you’ll go bug hunting with me.”

He represses a snort at the demand. “Yes, and I’ll go bug hunting with you.”

She beams. “I’ll make sure the other airports know you’re coming and that you need to get to the north as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, Ms. Rina.”

They sit like that for a second until Rina’s babysitter and her mother sharply tell her it’s time to go. Pitch draws even with her mother as she stands by the gate, hugging her uniform jacket and trying not to break down in front of her daughter. Inevitably, the crowd swallows up Rina, and both must admit that it’s time.

The flight attendants prep the plane, a skeleton crew who gripe about the lack of help and their absent coworkers. Rina’s mother is apparently flying alone, and she doesn’t bother to linger and mingle before shutting herself up in the cockpit. Pitch tires of the gossip and slinks in as well. Several hours later, the engines start, the announcements ring out in several languages, and the plane makes its way down the runway and into the sky.

It’s so relieving to sit down in an actual chair. He reaches down and massages his legs and feet, trying to ignore the pops and vague crunches that send tingles of pain up and down. Like hitting his funnybone over and over until the pain stops registering as anything but pins and needles. The first hour is blissfully silent except for the radio chatter Rina’s mother talks back to every so often and the occasional rowdy guest the flight attendants must assuage with their superficially flattering, subtextually insulting words.

At some point, though, Rina’s mother starts muttering to herself. The mumbling gets a little louder, cutting off whenever the radio pops back on, and then returning in sighs and rambles. And then he hears his name among it.

“—which is all well and good, Mr. Kozmotis, but definitely not the direction I saw my life going.” He freezes on the spot, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She shakes her head. “Whatever, he seems to have made her happy right now. And those two have left her alone for a bit.”

Pitch hesitates for a moment, then clears his throat. No response. He tries again, louder. Still nothing. He leans over and waves his hand in front of her face. She blinks through him. He sighs in relief and reclines back in the chair. That’s the last thing he ever wants to deal with when trapped in a metal tube hurtling through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour thousands of feet above the ground. His wishes don’t stop her from continuing to talk about him.

“Well, if I’m being replaced, then at least it’s by someone—something?—” He scoffs, offended. “—that scares those two. Maybe they’ll finally grow up.”

She takes her phone out for a second and taps over to the photo gallery, scrolling through a few that have the air of trophy displays. Rina with a few moths and butterflies. A blurry one with an abnormally large beetle. A selfie with her on the porch, Rina dozing off in her arms at sunset.

“Maybe I should just take that small aircraft job on the island so she can see me more often. Then maybe some weird invisible guy won’t have to swoop in for her to be happy. No offense, Kozmotis.”

“Are you… jealous? Of me?” He stifles a laugh for no other reason than he wants to hear where this is going.

“Bet you don’t have problems with this,” she says, gripping the control wheel until her knuckles go white. “Bet all the kids you visit love you and never think you’ll leave them forever when you go do your job. Bet you have no other kids, and Rina’s sitting there showing you bug facts on the internet after you changed your mind and stayed because that’s what she desperately wants.” She swallows a sob. “Why am I angry at my own daughter for being a child?”

“It happens,” he whispers back, thinking about the memory dream. He was apparently been concerned about being so absent back then, despite his work being so important. Guilt at not managing to get back to his spirit rises like a thick bile in his stomach, as well. “Sometimes it’s out of our—your—our control.”

The flight becomes three hours of them saying things back and forth, speaking to the narrow walls surrounding them. How easily he shifts back to talking to himself, to hear something, to imitate real conversation. He’s been missing from the Guardians’ custody for just over twenty-four hours, and he’d kill to hear another stupid story from North or the discomforting recollections of the Golden Age from Sanderson. They’d at least be able to react to his objections and eye rolls and audible disinterest.

“I never knew it was possible to miss things that annoy you,” he says.

“I love my job, but I’m torn between it and my daughter. I hate feeling guilty for loving the sky,” she replies, but not to him.

“Is it possible to eject loved ones from your life you don’t remember loving? I’m not even sure if what I feel is love so much as it is a constructed memory based on how I love the spirit waiting for me.”

He’d kill to just see one second’s worth of the spirit. He _will_ kill for them. That’s what it’s going to come down to, knowing the Nightmare Men.

“One day I’m going to have to tell her I was just like those two.” Rina’s mother shakes. “I suppose I don’t have to, but if she ever goes into the city with me… so many of my victims from lyceum are still there.”

“You’re not a coward just because you ran.”

“I’m worse than a coward. I could go anywhere, change anything about myself, and I chose to haunt the countryside.”

The plane hits storm turbulence as they start the descent, and Pitch tries not to disturb the array of screens, buttons, and levers in front of him as he braces himself. He catches a glimpse of his bare wrists again, reaches up to his neck to confirm what he’s known for the last day. He’s free. There is nothing else tying him to the Guardians, the Pole, the cell, the planning table. Not anymore.

They land, and after a slow rollout up to the gate, the plane empties. The flight attendants drop their in-flight masks and trade sympathies about the problem passengers as they leave. Only once there’s no more chatter do Rina’s mother and Pitch head for the exit.

“Here we are,” she mutters, gesturing. “Hope it was a good flight. You’re not a bad listener, Kozmotis.”

“Thank you for the expert flying,” he replies, pushing past her. “And for putting a few things into perspective.”

As he brushes past, she turns her head quickly, confused. She spins around either way, looking for something. Pitch watches her, walking backwards through a few adults milling about the area. She stops twisting in place, rubs her eyes, and shakes her head. And she leaves, moving around the humans who’re standing in the middle of the walkway and dodging between those walking.

He runs, passing through as many humans as he needs to, searching for a list of flights. He makes his way back to the main hub of the airport, and humongous screens of flashing text lay out his potential paths. He searches the lists, trying to remember what different places are named these days, which ones are more northern than others. The geography of the world is more theoretical from the inside of a terminal.

But he can go anywhere he wants. He rubs his wrists and scratches his neck.

“Do I even truly miss that?” he asks himself. The little finger on his hand pulses, and he flexes it, wondering if it’s his imagination. He knows the answer, and he says it out loud to force himself to hear it: “Not the imprisonment, no. But the reprieve from loneliness, yes. I miss it terribly.”

He spots a flight to Vienna—the only northerly flight taking off before tomorrow—and heads for the gate.


	46. To Reach the Moving Finish Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no update wednesday 9/9. next update friday 9/11

You hold your breath in an attempt to steady your hands. This is the most delicate process you’ve done in awhile, and you’re running low on the materials. You’re trying to re-create something like the plant arrow you used on the Zhuokou memorial, mostly out of spite toward Bunny. Unfortunately, the flowers he’s accidentally let bloom around the Pole in his holiday prep exhaustion are delicate and have a very short shelf life. Using your power to preserve it doesn’t extend the time you have that much.

A few petals, sprinkled with your magic, sit at the bottom of a glass container, and you’re trying to cover it with a distillation mixture you developed years ago, with a few new tweaks. One part melted Pole snow, one part magic, one part ground moon resin. It’s a solid foundation to work from, and the variation you used back in your forest had worked just fine. The Pole snow seems to work as an effective medium between spring water and natural magic, however, probably because the site itself sits on an area of natural power.

You slowly pour the mixture over the petal. Can’t just shove it in there, or the preservation magic breaks and the petals dissolve away before it can mix in. Can’t go the other way or else they takes too long to mix in and the magic breaks that way. Have to take a steady flow to it, let them soak in the mixture at their own pace.

The itch returns. Your arm jerks, splashing too much on top of the petals at once. You keep the breath in and set the container on your makeshift lab desk in the hopes it settles down in time. For a second, it looks like the magic will hold, and you sigh. And then in another instant, the petals wilt and disintegrate.

You scream in frustration and throw the container against the wall. It shatters, and the jagged pieces of glass join a few more containers’ worth on the floor. You’ll have to sweep that up soon, before someone comes in and starts asking questions. _Always asking you questions…_ But for now, you just lay your head in your hands and breathe.

The last few days have been tense and boring, a volatile mix with your anxiety. The planning for the new moon seems to have stalled as well, with everyone taking a “wait and see” approach and just continuing to build off of the plans laid down before. Mostly moving more of the teeth out of the Palace in the hopes of sparing some of the older kids. Technically, you’ve been tasked with creating more preserved dreamsand, but you’ve been letting it dissipate in the corner while you go about your experiments. Your failing experiments.

You rub your eyes and get up, grabbing a hand broom and a broad sheet of paper from a top shelf and heading over to the glass. As you brush it into a neat pile, the tinkling sound helps you focus on your task. You always wanted to hang some wind chimes around your treehouse, but never got around to it for one reason or another. The thought of home—so far away, probably deteriorating—makes you sweep toward yourself a little too hard, and a larger shard flies up and grazes your cheek. You clamp your eye shut on instinct, realizing your foolishness when you remember that’s the side with the lens.

_Stupid lens. Stupid situation. No control over anything…_

“Watch yourself, there,” a gentle chiding comes from behind you. Before you can faceplant into the pile in surprise, Pitch’s hands grab you and he helps you stand. You turn around and bury your face in his chest. He startles for a second, and then he curls his arms around you, barely letting his fingertips rest on your back.

“Hi,” you whisper. You’ve been hoping, waiting for him to visit again. It’s still a bad idea, but he doesn’t do half-measures. “Thanks for breaking up the monotony.”

“Of course.”

He slowly runs his palms to your shoulders, and you raise your eyes to him. He smiles and gently pushes until you’re just clinging to his forearms. He tugs one away and reaches to his side. You try to peek at what he’s doing, and he slowly produces a leather-like cylinder from somewhere. You gasp and reach out for your once-lost quiver.

“A gift,” he says.

“How—”

“Does it matter?”

He runs his fingers through your hair as you reach for the opening. You try to remember if you’d stashed any special arrows in there so long ago, but give up on trying to think through your excitement. You summon one to your hand, and instantly a simple, magic-tipped arrow apparates into your hand. Probably based around the dreamsand, as that had been the majority of your arrows for awhile. The shaft is a little bent, the feathers ripped and askew. You walk over to one of the corners and toss the arrow like a javelin to the ground. There’s a snap, and the tip fizzles on impact, but there’s no giant explosion or puff of magic. Just a light petering of smoke and inert sand.

“It does matter a little bit,” you finally reply.

He’s watching you closely. You walk back over to him, grasp his hand and lay a kiss to his palm. He curls his fingers around yours and backs up a step.

You continue, “I’m not ungrateful, I’m just confused. How? How did you get this?” He lets go and shifts away from you, leaning an ear to the closed entrance. “You’re not…” You cover your hand with your mouth. “You’re not back with the shadows, are you? After they tried to kill you—”

“Shh! Do you _want_ them to catch me and keep us apart longer?” The glare is enough to make you shut up immediately, going so far as to stop breathing as you seize up. He keeps it up for a second and then closes his furious eyes. When he re-opens them, they relax and gaze at you in a more familiar way. “I’m pushing my luck here. You know this.”

He leans against the door again, listening, and you notice that his wrists are empty, as is his neck.

 _That’s how he’s not getting caught,_ you realize. _They think he’s still in the cage._

The minute of silence leaves you alone with your racing thoughts. Half of them are spirals of catastrophizing, the amount growing with every second. But a few fight their way through the chaos.

_Why is he refusing to tell me how he did this? Why is he acting this way? What is wrong?_

Pitch turns his head toward you so fast you’re not sure when he actually moves. His eyes flash. Those thoughts struggle to stay afloat, as the pools of anxiety within you suddenly overflow and catapult you into a full-blown panic attack.

The room is too small now. The clicking and humming of your machines bounce off of every wall and back through you, clashing with each other and failing to merge seamlessly with the arrhythm of your heart. Your head hasn’t stopped ringing since the equinox, it’s only gotten slightly quieter, and a new migraine makes your head swim. You stumble. An arm wraps around you, Pitch’s. His other hand makes its way up your neck, where he prods at the mark. Pain zings out from his touch, and you feel something grow, feel something creep farther over your shoulders. He _tsks._

“Don’t worry, love,” he says. The rest of your hearing is muffled, but his words reach you clear as day. He raises your face to his, and you lock onto his eyes, searching for the safe harbor you’ve come to associate with them. “I’m here… But unfortunately, I can’t stay. They won’t let me.”

He taps your quiver. You try to control your breathing.

“Remember this the next time they try to convince you you’re more than a prisoner. Or free and willing labor for them to use to their own ends. Regardless of how, _I_ have rescued a vital part of your life for the last seventy-five years. _I_ have paid attention to what you need and what you desire. _I_ see you as you are, not as what might be most useful.”

He presses a cold kiss to your forehead. There’s something off about it and it lingers and if you could only get yourself under control maybe you could remember what exactly this feels like because something is trying to batter its way into your mind but it cannot find purchase on your slippery thoughts. But he kisses you. He stays there for a moment. You focus on the scar on his neck, and then close your eyes in relief. Only then does your breathing even out under his gentle touch. The murky pools of water inside you recede and calm.

He releases you, looks toward the door again and quickly whispers, “I must go for now. But please, please, my love, I beg of you: do not let your guard down around them. They say they mean well, but what are they besides child manipulators hiding behind convincing smiles and generous bribes?”

You close your eyes. He’s gone by the time you open them, your heartbeat slowing. The ache of missing him already coils around your stomach and chest, and you sniff back tears.

A _rat-tat-tat_ starts on the door, jolting more adrenaline through your body.

“Hey! Hey, it’s me and Sandy! Open up,” Jack calls. The pounding stops.

You wipe off your face as best you can and stuff the quiver behind dozens of bottles gathering dust on a high shelf. Jack calls your name again as you rush to situate the room. Finally, you open the door just in time for his fist to lightly knock your head.

“Oh, shoot. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” you mumble. It’s not. “What’s up?”

“We figured you could use a break. Wanna hang?”

“Oh… Uhm.” You glance back in to your lab. “I still have a lot of dreamsand to work with.”

“I can always give you more if what you have disappears,” Sandy whispers, smiling.

“Come on, take some time to clear your head.” Jack’s staff sparks a little, reeking with an air of fun. The sparks fizzle close to your face, and you lean back, scowling.

“You don’t need to force me.”

The staff stops glowing immediately, and Jack takes a step back, hunching over. “It was just a joke.”

“Not a very good one.” You push past him and yank the door closed behind you. Neither of them initially follow you down the hallway, so you turn to them. “Are we going?”

“Look, sorry about the magic thing, but if you’re going to be like this then you can go back to your cave or whatever.”

“Stop.” Sandy floats between you, flaring himself up. He looks at you. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” you lie. “I’m fine. Maybe just had an experiment go wrong right before you showed up.” You sigh, and then take a few more deep breaths. Your head slows its whirl a bit more, and the guilt settles in. “You’re right. Sorry, Jack.”

You make your way to the main hub of the workshop in silence. Only a few yetis are there right now, working the graveyard shift to keep track of the change in belief after the equinox. So far, a net gain, and the Guardians are more chipper than ever. Even Jack has perked up a bit from the efforts. Toothiana seems to be the only one who’s a bit down as she anticipates the loss of older believers at the new moon. You find yourself unable to care as much anymore. Children lose belief; that’s just part of life. It’s like a rite of passage. As Jack and Sandy lead you past the globe, though, you think about the lights. Alisah’s light. You don’t personally feel different, don’t feel any more powerful—apparently, it only becomes super important if Manny conscripts you—but knowing she’s out there thinking of you helps.

 _How long do I have before she gives up on me, though?_ Jordan believes in your existence, but she won’t be nine forever. Teenagerhood looms large in her future, and if she’s anything like you or your peers, so does cynicism and rebellion. _Unless things have changed since I died. Maybe rebellion nowadays is all about radical happiness and belief in the unseen. Well,_ you concede, _I guess interest in the occult has always been a feature of teenager rebellion. Maybe she’ll try to summon me with a ouija board._

Something soft hits your face, and you jump back a few steps. A heavy coat tumbles off your shoulders to the ground. Jack looks awkward and Sandy holds his hands up apologetically, then indicates they want you to go outside with them. You shove your feet into a pair of waiting, heavy boots, slide the coat on, and pull it as close to yourself just before the blast of Arctic air hits you. You get a ways away from the workshop before you have to know.

“Where are we going?” you ask, trying to distract yourself from the freezing temperature. It comes out a bit garbled through your chattering teeth, but Jack catches on.

“You’ll see.”

“I’d rather know before we get there. What sort of ‘break’ is this?”

“You’ll see.”

You stop in the middle of the ice. They wander about thirty feet ahead before noticing you’ve stopped. Jack flies back over and tugs at your arm. You rip it out of his grip and back up a few steps, trying to quiet the whispers rising back up within you.

 _Don’t prove him right,_ you realize they’re saying. The though shocks through you, ringing an uncanny bell in your head. And Pitch’s soft murmur against your ear creates an underscore to the chaotic composition. _Please don’t do this to me. Don’t prove him right._

“Please come with us.”

“Where. Are. You. Taking. Me?”

Sandy floats over, putting a finger over Jack’s stammering mouth and saying, “To a structure we set up nearby. On neutral ground. We wanted you to talk with Bunny about what happened at the Warren the other day.”

“He and I have nothing to talk about.” Nothing except an avalanche of swears, each more creative than the last.

Sandy sighs. “Look, we’re a team. We—”

“Since when am I part of the team?!” You try to keep from yelling, but talking above the maddening whispers is getting more and more difficult. “If you want to hire me on, ask me first!”

“We kind of assumed you were on board?” Jack says. “You seemed really ready to kick the butt of every shadow after we got you out of Pitch’s lair.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m one of you.”

“Then who’s side are you on?” The drawl cuts through the eerie drifts of the snow, as well as through your thoughts. Bunny shivers in place a few feet away, bouncing his legs to keep them warm. “Coulda swore you told me somethin’ different the other day.”

“Mine!” You scream. The itch from earlier never really left. It just leaps out of hibernation now. “I just want to choose my own path! What don’t you understand about that?”

They all look at each other, then at the mark on your neck, and back at each other.

“Sandy?” Jack says. “Do you see—”

“Yes,” he whispers, eyes wide. “Yes I do.”

“That clears it up for me,” Bunny says, a green glow starting up around him.

They move toward you. You take a tentative step back. They keep approaching.

“I said leave me alone.” Your voice cracks. Sandy holds up his hands and moves in front of Jack and Bunny before they can reach you.

“Look,” he says, “we don’t want to alarm you—because we didn’t notice until now—but that mark…”

“The one I got by protecting my great-granddaughter? That one?” Your head swims and the skin around your shoulders spasms and tightens. Your voice sound so pathetic when you say, “What about it?”

“It’s growing.” Bunny strains to lean over Sandy, reaching out with a green power swirling around his claws.

“It’s _definitely_ growing,” Jack replies. “We need to scratch this meeting and figure this out.”

Bunny lunges, faster than Sandy can yell for him to stop. You try to move backward out of range and one foot slips on the ice. You buckle and tip back, falling into the snow, only your coat and pants protecting you from getting all scraped up. There’s a scream, and flashes of green, blue, and golden light. You close your eyes and cover your head with your arms, ready to fall into oblivion yet again and wake up whenever they allow you.

You hear your name. You open one eye. You’re still on the ice.

Bunny leans over you. He backs up as soon as you start blinking, and he holds out his hand to you. There’s a few seconds of hesitation, and then he yanks you up to your feet. As you rise, you see Jack and Sandy passed out on the ground.

“Are they okay?” you ask, pointing to them.

“You care?” He rubs his eyes. “Look, I’m tired enough as it is, just help me haul these jokers back to the Pole.”

The whispers have completely dissipated. You still take a tentative step away from Bunny, just in case he changes his mind. A wind kicks up, and you shiver, trying to rub your arms enough that they’ll stop feeling so numb. He hauls one of Jack’s arms over his shoulders. He waits a moment, and then glances up at you. He rolls his eyes.

“Please?” he says. When you don’t budge, he shakes his head and wrestles a neutral look on his face. “Look, I know I’m hard to work with. Stubborn, even. But you gotta understand I’m tryin’ to look out for the planet. I can bottle up my personal issues until we’re done here.”

You can’t move. The whispers have gone, but you’re more aware than ever of how much control the Guardians have over your life. You’ve gotten far enough away from the Pole that it’s fading into the distance. It still takes up the majority of the skyline, but you’re half a mile away at most.

 _Run,_ a part of you says. The tone is tinged with that smooth voice. _Run while you still can._

Bunny yells your name, hopping from one foot to the other. “Are you gonna help me or just stand there and do nothing? Make up you’re damn mind already!”

You want to. You want nothing more to give him a definite answer, but the two halves of your mind are clawing and drowning each other out, stalling any sort decision. You want to see your son and your granddaughter. You want to go home. You want to be left alone to your own devices, to pretend nothing ever happened a year ago.

 _No,_ you say to yourself. _No, for all his faults, Koz dragging me into this was one of the better things that happened to me._

You can’t run. You can’t shut your eyes again. Much as you want to, despite how easy it would be to pretend like nothing ever happened, you promised yourself you wouldn’t run. You’re facing this.

But you also can’t pretend you’re not disturbed at your circumstances. Bunny shakes his head at you, his patience growing thin.

“Promise me,” you say, “that you won’t hold me prisoner. That I can do what I want when I want it.” There’s streaks of ice crawling from the corners of your eyes down your cheeks. “I have a long way to go, but I can’t live like this anymore, like I’m one mistake away from you all turning on me because of what I’ve done and who I’m with.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Where the heck is this coming from?”

“Please,” you beg, your voice turning into a whisper. “I’m scared and I don’t know how else to ask for help.”

He drops Jack’s arm and shuffles his way over to you. He looks at you with the most serious, yet sincere expression on his face you’ve ever seen.

“I promise we'll treat you with respect, trust your opinions, and work with you at your own pace,” he says. You’re rooted to the spot despite wanting to run in two directions. “If you help us fight the fearlings, Nightmare Men, and shadows in return.”

“Let me see my son.”

“We’ll deliver you to him once it’s safe, after Easter.” He shivers. “I don’t know what’s goin’ on with you right now, but I don’t want to hurt you. None of us do. I’m just frustrated ‘cause of everything. ‘Cause my purpose in this life is once again bein’ threatened by that menace.” He watches you for a moment, and then adds softly, “I’m not gonna stop hatin’ him after this. I can’t, and if you have anythin’ to say about it, tell me. I can’t be your friend if you choose this path, but I’m at least gonna make sure my friends’ friend is ok. That’s the best you’ll get from me.”

“Your ‘friends’ friend?’”

“They seem fond enough of ya. They’ve let you stay here and have your boyfriend. Lent you books, showed you your believers, protected you from the shadows even after they found out you helped a massacre happen.” He shrugs. “These two care enough about ya to try and pull this dumb stunt. That ain’t bein’ friends anymore?”

Pretty words. Words you want to hear, all of it. Words you need to hear, but you can’t decide if you can really trust it. But you want to. You want nothing more than to be able to trust people at face value again, most of all yourself. Not even your therapists in life could drag you over that line. Not your partner, either. You were too self-aware to allow yourself to listen to them and brush off all you’ve done.

 _What if they didn’t fail to take me over the line, though._ The snow is a wall of blank white around you, drowning out any distractions. _What if I’ve just been digging my heels in because I wasn’t self-aware enough?_

What if, what if, what if…

“You all just want things from me.”

“Yeah! I wanna get out of the cold. Right now. So grab one of ‘em already.”

You hesitate for another few seconds, and then force your legs to move. You walk over to Jack’s body and drag his arms around your shoulders. He watches you, more confused than ever, but relieved. He hauls Sandy up. You walk back in silence, and with every step, you move further and further away from territory you truly understand, and closer to a place you’ve only known in theory. One you’ve refused to entertain the idea of ever visiting, even after you swore you would.

Immediately after you’re back inside the warm building, you dump Jack into a chair and head back to your room. You instruct Kidra to stay alert, and take up the appearance of reading, but in reality, you’re fighting two different sets of impulses and trying to make it to that promised land of sanity and sense that’s just barely within reach.

A few hours later, there’s a sharp knock on your door. No one’s there when you open it, just a small bottle and a note stuck to the outside. You draw back into your room, reading the note:

"I meant what I said. I can’t be your friend if you stay with the Boogeyman, but I try to take care of people my friends care about. I think you’re heading down a steep spiral, whatever’s going on with you right now, and you need to sort that out first.

"But should the day come when you realize what kind of dark path you’re on with him, and you want out, call me. -Bunny"

A single petal—hardier than the others you’ve been working with; familiar in shape and color—sits at the bottom of the bottle.


	47. A Viral Star

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks at wordcount* i really had the gall to think this would be 50k at most when i started this huh.
> 
> thanks for joining me on this adventure tho. its teaching me a lot about myself and my ability to write long things.

Pitch disembarks in yet another continental city and immediately pushes his way to the front of the crowd surrounding the list of flights, talking himself through the decision.

“Paris! No, it leaves in twelve hours. Cairo… is the wrong direction. Moscow? Only if I absolutely need to go that far East.”

He searches and searches, watching the names flip and blink, trying to balance direction with time. He narrows it down to two: Hamburg and Amsterdam. Both leave within the hour, but he can’t tell which, if either of them, will carry him fastest. He commits the gate numbers to his memory and seeks out a map.

“And of course they’re on opposite ends of the airport…”

He sighs and runs for the closest one, passing by many arrays of televisions set to chatty channels and advertisements. Once he reaches the Hamburg gate, he starts leaning over the shoulders of everyone waiting, trying to glimpse their tickets. Unfortunately, most either aren’t holding them in their hands, or are obscuring the flight information. But finally, he catches a ticket about to drop out of the hand of a snoozing passenger.

One stop. Bucharest. Three hours in between. The entirely wrong direction for too long a layover. He slips the ticket into their pocket and checks the time. Forty-five minutes for takeoff for this one. He barely pauses before running to the other gate.

Halfway there, he trips over a child. He goes flying, rugburns blooming on his exposed legs where he skids across the floor. As he hauls himself up and shakes his head, he hears a voice behind him exclaim, “Oh! It’s you!”

Pitch turns, and the child he barreled over— _The child was tangible_ —points at him excitedly. They wave. Their guardian, presumably an airline employee from his uniform, helps them up and starts tugging at their hand. The child digs their heels in, wrenches their hand away, and runs over to Pitch.

“You’re Kozmotis, right?” they say. Pitch has no reaction, can only feel his face contort into what must be confusion, as the child then cocks their head. “Right? You look like what the news said.”

“I’m so sorry,” Pitch says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’m trying to find my way—”

“To the North Pole!”

“Come on, you can talk to your imaginary friend later. We have to catch our flight.” The airline employee grabs the child’s hand again and starts trying to pull them away. Pitch glances around, trying to see the nearest clock. He knows he doesn’t have much time… but all the same, his curiosity is piqued. He rushes over and walks by the child as they move.

“How in the world do you know about me?” he asks. “Better question, how does the news know about me?”

“I saw a clip on the internet,” the child says, fumbling to drag their phone out of their pocket. They tap a few times, and then flip it to him. A Greek news report starts playing.

“In happier news, a little girl named Rina from the island of Santorini is going viral with her adorable posts left on the review pages for a Milan airport. Apparently, her imaginary friend is taking a trip to the North Pole, presumably to help Santa Clause with something.”

The clip goes on to quote some of the posts, which develop into a conversation between Rina and so many strangers online. He smiles. Good for her. Though, of everything going on in the story, it’s the “imaginary friend” part that makes him the most uneasy. Not to mention all the attention the multitudes sharing the video are giving him.

“There goes the element of surprise,” he mutters as the clip ends. He glances around. They’re heading away from the terminal he’s supposed to be examining.

“Maybe we’ll be on the same flight.”

“Unless you’re going to either Hamburg or Amsterdam, probably not.”

The child stops in his tracks, causing the man their with to wrench his shoulder a bit.

“Actually, I am supposed to be going to Amsterdam.” The child reaches down and flips up a piece of paper pinned to their shirt. “Collin—Unaccompanied Minor” it says, and then it lists their flight.

Pitch points the opposite direction. “You’re going the wrong way. And the plane leaves in less than an hour.”

Collin looks up at the man tugging on their arm. And as Pitch looks closer, he finally sees that the man’s uniform certainly looks official at first glance, but there’s no insignia or name for an airline, just decoration. The man’s sweating as keeps trying to coax Collin forward. He keeps glancing somewhere ahead of him, and Pitch realizes there’s a security guard barely three feet away, back turned to them all. He keeps clicking the button on his rolling carry-on, fiddling with the handle. Pitch adds this all up in his head and realizes.

“Hm… I see.”

Collin looks up at the man. “Kozmotis says the Amsterdam gate is behind us.”

“Well!” He leans on his rolling case, trying to look casual. “Maybe he doesn’t actually know what he’s talking about. I work here every day and know the flights by heart.”

Collin whips his head back to Pitch, who holds up one finger to the child. He walks around to the other side of the man, indicates for Collin to watch, and then kicks the bag out from under him. Collin erupts into laughter as the man falls over himself. The bag rolls straight into the heel of the security officer, who barely manages to keep herself from swearing once she sees the child behind her. Collin rushes up.

“Ma’am, which way is the gate I need?” They show her their ticket, and she points the same way Pitch had. Collin’s eyes widen in shock and their mouth drops open. They point and say, “He was taking me away from there!”

“No! No. I, uh…” The would-be kidnapper tries to right himself, but the guard clasps him on the shoulder and calls for backup over her radio.

“Don’t worry, sir,” she says sweetly, death shooting from her eyes. “We’ll get this all sorted out in a moment.”

Another guard quickly shows up, and she hands him off to them, taking Collin’s hand and leading the child back to their proper gate. By now it’s been too long and Pitch has no choice but to hop on this flight. Running back around to the other would take far too long. He tries to distance himself from Collin, but they want nothing more than to chat with him. Pitch tries to disappear into the cockpit again, but both chairs were occupied with much chattier pilots than before. Luckily, Collin is more than happy to have him sit next to them.

He sinks down in the chair—the window seat, meaning there was no easy escape—and he endures Collin’s talking throughout the flight. By the first fifteen minutes of it, the child has announced to everyone on the plane that he was there with them. Most of the passengers are, thankfully, adults. They smile and indulge Collin, but they’re more than happy to disregard the notion that he could possibly real and watching on in mounting embarrassment. Eventually, the excitement of travel overwhelms them, and Collin falls asleep.

It’s a long two hours, but finally it comes to a close. Right as he makes to run after disembarking, Collin calls out to him. He freezes mid-stride, desperate to hop the next flight as quickly as possible, but the sleepy voice compels him for a moment. He turns.

“You used to be the boogeyman, right? That’s what the internet says.” Pitch recoils for a second before nodding. “What happened?”

“The darkness decided it was better off without me.” He considers for a moment. “It may have been more that we had creative differences.”

“But you’re good now?”

“That’s a complicated statement, one I unfortunately don’t have time to discuss right now. Besides,” he says, watching the young one sway and fight to keep their eyes open. He laughs and the corner of his mouth twitches. “I think that’s more for you to decide at this point.”

Collin doesn’t have time to answer, as a few real airline employees come up to them, check their paperwork, radio ahead, and then surround them to escort them to their next location.

But as they’re prodded off, Collin swings around and says, “If you’re not sure whether you’re good or not, I think you’re okay!”

Pitch stops in the middle of the hallway, watching the child leave. He lets them completely disappear before moving down the hallway again, passing terminals and captioned news channels speaking right through the humans suffering from delays and layovers and interrupted sleep. But he tunes in as he passes, just in case the shadows are affecting the world already.

In the two? Three days? However long it’s been since the equinox, the areas in the southern hemisphere most riddled with fearlings have seen breakthroughs. Proposed compromises. A resistance to the big fear Pitch had nurtured in those areas. There is no victory yet, but there is movement.

“Hardly my own doing,” he mutters. “It’ll take more than the equinox to undo it completely.”

But he does feel a little lighter at the news.

He passes through a hallway completely encased in large windows. The star-speckled sky, draws him over, the vast space visible in some glory despite the unnatural brightness of the airport. The longer he watches, the more his stomach turns and twists. His heart burns. His head spins and he’s nearly thrown around in a bout of spontaneous vertigo.

“This more than mild illness, I think.”

He barely identifies it, what with it being so long since he’s had any chance to approach it. These stars… he misses the stars. He’s homesick. He scoffs at the idea immediately, trying to shove it as far away from his cold soul as possible. He takes a moment, closes his eyes, and takes in a few deep breaths before pushing away from the window.

It’s then that the waning moon starts to peek out from behind the building. An idea hits him, and Pitch rushes back to the window, trying to catch the attention of the Moon. Either the Man or Selene will do. He calls and waits, leaning his ear against the window and straining to hear either of them. He desperately searches the sky for a moonbeam swirling his way.

Stormclouds cover the sky. Pitch shivers, and he lowers his gaze closer to the horizon, glancing around for what he knows he’ll see. The first lightning bolt reveals the entity’s silhouette. The second bolt reveals it has disappeared just as quickly.

“So be it,” he says. “I don’t know what you are, but if you’re determined to have me do this alone, I shall.”

He comes across the large, uncannily familiar list of flights—each one in different airports, similar enough in shape, similar enough in function, but completely separate from each other. Just as frustrating nonetheless, as the smaller list reveals that no relevant flights are scheduled to leave for at least eight hours.

“Iceland… Norway… Either of those are the last obstacles before a trudge over the ice cap.”

He still doesn’t quite know how he’s going to manage that one in less than a week and a half, but what else can he do but try? He tucks himself in a chair in the corner, stretching himself out and working more of the stiffness out of his limbs. He’s actually a lot more energized than he thought he should be by now. Running his hands over his arms, he catches only a few patches of bruising pain when he presses. 

Hours pass. He’s only barely aware of time moving, so far away from the natural influences of the day and night cycles.

“If only I’d paid attention when I was the boogeyman,” he says at some point. “Perhaps I could have capitalized on the inherent oddities of travel ports.”

The temperature never changes in these buildings, and rarely does the lighting. Overlapping echoes of kindly, informative voices repeat instructions on an endless loop, and if it’s not a chipper voice offering advice, it’s an advertisement for one of the many stores or restaurants also contained within. The officials walking through are detached, and no while many pilots and flights attendants head in and out through the security checkpoints, none of them repeat. Pitch, as acquainted with dubious times and places as he is, still has to keep an eye on the many clocks littered around the screens and walls to keep track of how long he’s been waiting.

After another while, he stands and wanders around, finding himself in a clothing store. The divide between glamor and practicality is steep. One wall is a shrine dedicated to the gods of fashion and vanity; the other is indistinguishable from a warehouse. The workers overseeing this mockery of normality lean against the front counter, trying their hardest to look like they’re working on something worthwhile despite the fact they’re both focused on their phones.

It takes no time for Pitch to steal some proper clothing, tug it on, and at the last moment swing back for a slightly warmer coat and boots. He tosses the ratty blanket at the workers, who wake suddenly as the fabric breaks back into their visible sphere. He clomps around, trying to break in the boots enough to justify the work to take them and shove his still aching feet into them.

He heads back through various rooms, great empty halls with blank-eyed attendants haunting them, until he walks back to the main hub. As he curves around a large pillar, he looks up, and stops dead in his tracks. He blinks a few times, even going so far as to rub his eyes to make sure he’s not fallen prey to the odd atmosphere. One more chance to clear his eyesight… He backs up until he can’t see past the pillar anymore, and then re-emerges.

Alisah leans against the hunched form of an elder gentleman. He wraps one arm around her, preventing her from falling off the bench where they’re sitting and waiting. They face away from Pitch, out toward the sputtering fountain in the center of the room.

_That_ must _be… how could he not be?_

Pitch slowly approaches them, rounds them on Alisah’s side to get a glimpse. He peers closely at the old man, and the more he can see of his face, the more his features echo Alisah's. It’s almost impossible to see at first glance, as their apparent age differences disguise most of it. But there he is.

“Jordan,” Pitch whispers.

Jordan jerks up and shakes his head. He glances down at Alisah, who’s desperately trying to stay awake. It’s far too early for any of them to still be up, but the artificial lighting and constant noise diminishes the cycles of the planet. He gives her a small squeeze and looks around the mostly empty room, finally laying her down gently and rising to stretch. His back pops in a few places, and Pitch is sure he’s about to throw it out at a few moments. But then he shakes himself out a bit and turns. Halfway to reaching for his bag, Jordan stops and looks right at Pitch.

Pitch instinctively slides back into the nearest shady corner, but it’s not quite enough. Jordan opens his mouth to speak but only gets as far as, “Hi—” before another human skims past Pitch and hands Jordan a coffee cup.

“Just like you like it, Dad,” she says, sliding onto the bench and pulling Alisah into her lap. She sips her own cup, and pulls out her phone to browse. Jordan glances from the cup to his own daughter and back to Pitch.

“Hey, Lena,” he says. He points to Pitch. “Is there someone right there?”

Lena looks around, even up and down the pillars and across the floor. “No,” she replies. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Might need a new prescription when we get back.” He readjusts his glasses. “Glad you’re back now, though, cause I need to go use the bathroom.”

“Okay.”

Jordan makes deliberately eye contact with Pitch as he walks away. He takes a few steps, turn around, checks if his daughter is paying attention, and then motions for him to follow. When they’re tucked away in a quiet corner, Jordan turns to him, wringing his hands.

“You’re, uh… you’re that Kozmotis guy from the internet, right?” He gives Pitch a once-over. Pitch represses the instinct to hunch into himself. “Yeah, you’re gray and weird looking—no offense, sorry—but I thought the descriptions said you were wearing a toga.”

“I traded it in for something more useful to get to the North Pole.”

“So you _are_ headed that way.”

Pitch nods. He swallows. “You didn’t call me over here just to make small talk, did you?”

Jordan takes a deep breath, holds it, and then lets it out slowly. Just as his parent has done so many times. His jowls tremble as he shakes his head, and the thin, white hairs that yet cling to his skull wave a bit.

“I um… Look, I don’t really understand why I can see you and others like you or the weird items that pop up every now and then. But I do know that, well, my parent is one of you.” He groans and rubs his eyes. “Maybe you have no idea who I’m talking about or maybe you don’t care, but—”

“I know them.” Pitch whispers the spirit’s name, and Jordan’s face lights up, seeming decades younger. His eyes dance with hope and hunger and honest bewilderment.

“Do you know where they are? Please, if you do, please tell me, I—”

“They’re why I’m heading north in the first place.”

“Great.” Jordan paces back and forth a bit. “That’s cool. That’s really… Can they come see me?” He stutters and shakes his head, correcting himself. “I mean, when you see them, can you ask them if they’ll come see me? I saw them in a crowd like a year ago, and I thought I was hallucinating, but Alisah saw them, too, and-and…”

It’s painful to watch such an old, wizened-looking human hold back tears. Even worse to watch the spirit’s child do so.

“They ran away from me.”

“They probably didn’t recognize you. I believe it’s been a few years since they’ve seen you.”

“I just want to see them one more time before I have to... to go.” He gulps, and then he pats over his pockets quickly. He finds a pen and a scrap of paper and jots down his address. “I want to know why they didn’t stay after they changed. I want… answers. To things.”

Pitch hesitates, then reaches out and clasps him on the shoulder. “Trust me when I say that they want nothing more than to see you and catch up. But,” he adds as Jordan tries to speak, “things are a little weird at the moment, and they’re needed to help set things… back in balance, so to speak.”

He sniffs. “Hey, uh, Kozmotis?” Pitch nods. “The internet says you take care of kids, right? Or, you watch out for them if they need it.”

“It’s a recent development, but sure.”

He leans back and looks over at the bench. “Could you spare an hour or so when you’re done up north and take care of my granddaughter? She was kidnapped a little while ago, and it’s mostly like a dream—a nightmare—to her, thank goodness. I'd never wish full memories of something like that. That’s why we moved up this trip, actually. To get her and our minds off things.” He gestures around. “But I went through something similar when I was only a little older than her, and that sort of thing sticks to kids forever. If you can get her mind off of it, I’d be thankful.”

“Of course,” Pitch replies. His pinky finger pulses for a second, tightening as if something is wrapping around it. “I have others to… help?” Jordan is confused at the question. Pitch clears his throat. “Help, yes. But your parent has told me enough about Alisah that I’m curious. She seems like such a bright young woman.”

“Yeah…” His sob strains against the tears he won’t let fall. Pitch squeezes his shoulder. “Yeah."

“All right, then. Travel safe.”

“Thanks.”

As Jordan starts to head off, something occurs to Pitch. “Wait! Jordan, one moment!”

He slowly turns on his heel, looking confused and the least bit wary. Pitch realizes he hadn’t ever introduced himself with his name, nor was he expecting a first-name basis. As the man watches on, Pitch merely shrugs and tries to wave it off.

“What should I get them?” he asks quickly.

“What?”

“Your parent. I haven’t seen them in a moment, and I thought I’d bring…” He’s digging himself into a very awkward hole with no way to bail himself out. “Just a small gift.”

Jordan crosses his arms, looking Pitch up and down again. Pitch, meanwhile, struggles to control any color rushing to his cheeks. Jordan purses his lips and sighs.

“If I remember rightly, you could pick up any cool-looking rock or plant and ask them a question about it, and they’d have a blast over the next three hours telling you all about how it’s made up of atoms or protons or whatever.” He thinks for a moment and then reaches into his pocket. He unhooks something from his key ring and holds it out. “Or you could give them anything like this and they’d go on for three hours about that, too.”

Pitch grabs the keychain. A flying saucer flies through a neon starfield that reads “But do aliens believe in me?” _Of course…_ He smiles and holds it back out, but Jordan refuses.

“If they don’t want it, they can give it back to me in person.”

“Thank you.”

Jordan hobbles back to the bench, and in less than an hour, the small family moves on to their gate. Pitch tails them and sees them off. Jordan gives him one more nod before entering the cabin. Soon enough, the plane takes off and disappears into the overcast sky.

The hours compress and Pitch is finally stepping onto his flight. He takes the last leaps up to the tip of Norway, and after one more excruciating wait, to the last haven of humanity so far north in Svalbard.

_Just over five days,_ he confirms as he exits the small airport, making one last stop to pilfer a good compass. _Five days to make it this far. Just over a week to make the last few miles._

He takes a deep breath, and points his feet northward, a roll of thunder threatening him to his south.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's title brought to you by the otmgirls. go watch aggretsuko 11/10 beautiful stuff


	48. Step Four

“I want…”

You scratch out a few things on the page and make nonsensical scribbles to keep yourself awake. In an effort to slow the spread of the mark, you and Sandy hastily threw together a salve you’ve been spreading over it. You’re not sure how well it’s been working—it’s only been a few days so far—but naturally so much sand nearby, soaking in, makes you lethargic.

“I have…”

You get up and pace around your room for a bit, trying to clear your head enough to figure this out. One of Kidra’s ears follows you as you shuffle in circles, stopping to watch the mild dawn between the snowflakes or to run your fingers over the rough exposed beams. You’re waiting for something to happen, to have a revelation drop down to you, to have the right direction helpfully pointed out to you in blinking neon impossible to ignore.

“I can’t go on like this.”

The spreading mark, the roiling anticipation, the mysteries that bear no answers, and the spiraling. Spiraling out of control to the point where you feel like you might snap at the hint of a breeze.

“This is exactly what I’ve been talking about.”

There it is. There _he_ is. You flinch at the sudden sound, but stop yourself from immediately spinning to face him. The impulse is almost overwhelming. You’re already sinking into the scent of myrrh and old books that surrounds him. Already leaning into his arms as his fingertips brush against you and comb the confusion from your hair. Already shivering from his cool breath dancing against your ear. He hasn’t moved from where he stands behind you, across the room, but you mentally seek out his familiarity to ground you.

And it’s working.

“I’ve been saying that staying here isn’t good for you, haven’t I?”

Kidra boofs and shifts onto their legs as he steps up behind you. You worry the lens on your face, lifting it to rub your eye as you finally face him. Before you finish turning, he wraps his fingers around your wrist and drags it away from the lens, adjusting it to sit properly over your eye again. You look up at Pitch, who’s still holding your wrist. Who’s looking you over blankly.

“They’ve confused you again,” he diagnoses. “It’s on purpose, you know, to keep you from embracing what you know is true. But they’ll keep avoiding it, keep stringing you along as long as they can keep hold of your power.”

“Why are you doing this?” you ask. He slowly lowers your arm to your side, reaching out to hold your shoulders in his hands like a middle-schooler at their first slow dance. “I don’t like when you get like this.”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” he replies, jerkily twisting a lock of hair around his finger. “I’ve certainly become increasingly frustrated with you, but only because I see you drifting—”

“Do you love me?” You stare at him, pressing your mouth into a line so thin that your lips start to tingle.

He freezes, eyes twitching as he processes what you’ve asked. Just as quickly, he stutters, “Of course I do. If I didn’t, why would I risk the Guardians’ wrath to keep seeing you? Why would I still be here trying to make you realize that you don’t have to be exploited for their purposes, if I did not love you?”

“Because what you say and what I see don’t line up, and I just keep getting more and more confused.”

“You weren’t like this before they showed up. Back in your forest a year ago.” He lays a hand over the mark, then flinches and quickly moves it to your arm, not-so-subtly wiping the salve that stuck to him onto your shirt. “When it was just us—well, I know it wasn’t a perfect beginning, but if you and your spouse could make it work after what you did—”

He gasps for a second and reaches into his robe. With a flourish, he whips out a small paper rectangle, a little worse for wear around the edges, but overall intact. He flips it around so you can see, and he catches you when your knees buckle at the sight of the photo.

“Easy, easy…” He places it into your hands. “The shadows, I’ve realized, are not only far more powerful than I’ve given them credit for, but generous to those who are strong enough to command them. And their commander’s allies, of course.”

Kidra’s ears twist toward the door, and they flick their head over to it. The sound of tired yetis stomping to their stations thuds through. Pitch freezes as the sound gets louder, then relaxes as it fades. He places a hand to your waist, and there’s something just off about it, from the way he barely hovers his hand to how he tries to find the right angle for his wrist so that he can slip against you as easily as two puzzle pieces connect.

“Please, my love,” he whispers, grabbing your face and pulling it up to face him yet again. “Don’t just consider what I’ve been saying, act on it. Either escape while you still can, or fight back. Before they take you fully under their sway. Before they turn you against me.”

He pushes your face back down to kiss your forehead and over your eye—quick little things that barely make contact—and by the time you’re glancing back up, he’s gone. Only a slight warp in the air remains as evidence he was here to begin with. Until that, too, fades.

You tuck the photo into your quiver, hoping it will finally remain safe in the vast, extra-dimensional space. And you set back to work.

Most of the next few days are spent holed up in your lab space. You lose count of exactly how many days pass, but the moon gets darker and darker, Selene’s eye opening in the yawning void.

 _“You are obscured,”_ she says suddenly one day. You pause in the middle of loading some tubes. _“I can see you and hear you, my knight. But I barely recognize you.”_

“Why?”

_“I do not know. Though I am intrigued by the circumstance.”_

“What should I do?”

_“I am not here to direct your existence. I am watching. I am waiting for your actions. I will thrive if you do. I will fade if you do.”_

“What’s my purpose for being here?” Your heart is going ten million miles an hour, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for her to clarify why she made you. Waiting—

_“That is up to you. I interfered in your death because I saw promise. I saw curiosity. And by coincidence, those things were nearly killed as I happened to look on. I am too old to create for purpose. But young enough to create for experimentation.”_

“So, I don’t have a purpose…”

 _“Why expect one from me? What do_ you _want? That is what I want to see from you.”_

“What do _you_ want?” One of your therapists had asked you that same thing years ago, finally frustrated with you. They’d almost snapped the pen in their hands.

You’d told them that you just wanted to make sure you could control your anxiety. A textbook, satisfying answer. That was your last visit with them before starting over with a new one, the longest you’d ever stayed with a single doctor. You’d put up with a whole year of them because they had so many clients you were always shoved out exactly after your forty-five minutes were up. But they had said something in one of your sessions that stuck with you.

“Step one is ‘I have a problem.’ Step two is ‘I want to solve this problem.’ Step three is ‘Help me solve this problem.’”

Step one is always easier to accomplish than what comes after step three.

“I want…”

You quickly pivot, shaking out a few of your older supplies and haphazardly fiddling with new combinations until you have a new batch of arrows. The dreamsand mostly continues to fizzle away in the corner, dropping to very low levels that the Guardians will be disappointed in. But you don’t have time; the new moon is coming up fast. You make one last arrow—the only one of its kind due to the fragile nature of its components—and you preserve as much dreamsand as you can before your time is up. And before you set your plan in motion.

You manage to sneak a container of a mixture to a less-traveled, though still used area of the workshop. You tie an arrow to a rope, string the rope around a beam, and set a candle under the rope. The candle is the wild card of this whole plan, but once the arrow drops, it should extinguish. You slip back to your room and pack. The yeti stationed under your window is the last major obstacle. But you wait.

The explosion sends a shockwave through the whole workshop, and legions of cursing and yelling people rush to the opposite end from where you are. The yeti below your window shakes awake at the sound. They hesitate for a moment, and you almost have to risk them, but they rush off to go see what happened.

You whistle for Kidra and wrap your fingers through their short mane. With a nudge of your heels, they shove themself through the small window, cracking the frame and walls around it, and follow your lead south.

You take the long way around, getting out of sight of the Pole as fast as you can. Kidra glides on. Not too much later, you see a familiar patch of green land. You guide Kidra down and start searching, trying to stomp down every instinct screaming for you to go back that very instant where you were safe. Because you weren’t, were you? That’s why you’re on your hands and knees turning over stones, trying to find the entrance to the Warren that Katherine had led you to about ten days ago.

A large shadow passes overhead. It honks. You jump to your feet as Kailash circles overhead, Katherine at her reins. She draws the goose up to a hover.

“It’s not there anymore,” she yells down at you. “Hang on. Give me a second.”

She lands the goose nearby and rushes over to you. You draw your bow, blood pounding in your ears. You don’t want to shoot her, there shouldn’t be any need to shoot her. But between Pitch’s visits and the mark growing, you’re not entirely sure what to trust anymore. Nothing and no one except Kidra. Katherine stops as soon as you raise your bow a bit. She hold out her arms.

“This isn’t one of the permanent entrances to the Warren,” she says. “I opened it myself last time. I can do it again, but I need to know why you came here.”

“I… I needed to clear my head. To get away from everything.”

“What’s ‘everything?’”

“It’s complicated.”

“Are you here to mess with the Source?”

“No!”

“Are you here to hurt Bunny?”

“No, I… I actually wanted to talk with him.”

“Why couldn’t you do that at the Pole?”

“Can we…” You start yelling at yourself that this was a terrible idea and you need to abort _now._

 _No!_ you scream even louder. _No, I want to see this through. Need to._

Katherine takes one or two steps closer, halting when you focus on her again. You lower your bow just a bit. “Not too long ago, you offered to get me out of the Pole if I didn’t want to participate in the deal anymore.” Your breath hitches. “Does the offer still stand?”

No more questions. She pauses for one second as she processes what you say, and then she’s fiddling with something magical. A large hole in the ground groans open three yards away. She gestures for you to go in, searching the skies around you until you’re both heading down the dark tunnel. You struggle to stop yourself from running straight down; technically you’re trespassing, and you don’t want to take a boomerang to the face too quickly. Katherine slides up beside you, her face harder than you’ve ever seen it. She pats your wrist and moves ahead of you, taking out the communications sphere from the equinox.

“Bunny,” she says. She waits a moment.

“Katherine?! Did you just come in?” he yells back. “What’s happening at the Pole?”

“I’ll explain in person in a moment, but please come meet me at the entrance.” She glances up at you, adding, “And keep an open mind.”

Barely five minutes later, Bunny bounds up the tunnel. He opens his mouth to ask questions, and then spots you lingering behind her. A boomerang is in his hand before you can see him grab it, raising above his head. She rushes up and grabs his arm.

“They need our help.” He keeps glaring. “They’re the cause of all the confusion at the Pole right now because they wanted to escape.”

“Didn’t get too far, did ya?” he says to you. Katherine yanks his wrist down, twisting it until he flinches.

“They came straight here!”

You clear your throat. “Bunny, you told me not to talk to you again until I realized what was going on, right?”

His tense form softens, as does the glare on his face. He lowers his weapon to his side, but doesn’t sheathe it.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Believe I said that. Believe I also gave you somethin’ to call me with instead of bargin’ right into my home.”

You shrug and run a hand over the mark. “Can we sit down and talk somewhere less close to the entrance? Please?”

He rolls his eyes, but nods and turns to lead you down the tunnel. It’s awhile before you emerge into the hub area. He gestures for you to continue down another way, and eventually you come to a cozy nook with moss-covered, tarnished metal thresholds.

“Make yourself comfy,” Bunny says, tossing one of his boomerangs onto a paint-stained chair.

He heads off to another room, and Katherine gently tugs your bow from your hands to put it next to the boomerang. You sit on a nearby stool, wiping it free of dried leaves before setting yourself down. Katherine rushes out to take care of Kailash for a second. Kidra wanders up beside you and lays their head on your lap. You busy yourself with stroking their ears until Katherine returns. She curls up on a carved stone bench across from you, tugging at her hair.

You’re silent for the next half hour or so. Even if you knew where to start a conversation, you don’t know if she should go first. Bunny, meanwhile, is cooking something, pots and plates bumping against each other, the odd curse escaping through the threshold despite how quietly he says it. The thick, comforting smell of chocolate wafts through the air, a hint of something spicy giving it an edge that cuts through your and Katherine’s tension just enough that the walls crack.

“Why didn’t you come to me first?” she finally asks. “You clearly remembered what I’d told you before.”

“I… You’re right.” You almost choke on the phrase. Surely you’re old enough by now that you can get more things right the first time and you don’t have to be ashamed. That’s not the point of right now, though. “I just… I’ll explain in a second, once he gets back in here. It’s complicated, and I don’t know what to do. Just that something needs to change.”

“Okay. But I’m really confused about what’s so complicated that you felt the need to set a bomb off in the North Pole.”

“What?”

Bunny appears in the room, holding three steaming, mismatched cups. Kidra perks up and slinks over to him, circling him for a second and threatening to overturn the mugs he’s worked so hard on.

“Hey, hey!”

Bunny half-laughs as they try to sneak their forked tongue into one of the cups. He gently nudges them out of the way with his foot. You tense in your seat, as you’ve been on the other end of those things. But Kidra slowly moves out of the way and hovers around you as Bunny sets the cups down on a small, creaky, wobbly table that looks more like a repurposed stool. The eclectic mix of recycled furniture suddenly hits you as the cozy collection it is in the low-ceilinged room that looks like it was carved directly from the rock itself. You barely even notice that you’re below ground. Once he settles himself into a seat of some sort, Bunny takes a sip of the concoction he’s made and leans back against the backrest.

“What the heck is this about a… a _bomb?”_

You grab one of the cups, letting the heat seep from the ceramic into your hands. For all the warmth of these tunnels, you relax at the comforting heat the hot chocolate gives off. It’s like huddling around a fresh cup of coffee during an afternoon thunderstorm: familiar, freeing. Bunny leans forward as you take your first sip. The spicy tang is definitely there, but the heavy body of the semi-sweet chocolate balances it out in a way that simultaneously topples you off-balance and connects you to resurfacing nostalgia.

Jack’s nuts if he thinks North’s hot cocoa can even compare to this.

“It was mostly harmless,” you say. “Just the distraction I was using to make my way out of the workshop. To come here.”

“You’re lucky no one was walking that way when it went off,” Katherine replies.

“Why?” Bunny says. “Why go that hard when there were easier ways of handlin’ this?”

You shake your head. “I don’t know, really. It just seemed like the best way to escape. At the time.” Before either of them can reply, you blurt out, “Pitch has been getting out of his cell and visiting me over the last two weeks.”

Their words die on their lips and morph into expressions of surprise, anger, and victorious validation. Bunny leans in, righteous fire in his eyes, smirk on his muzzle that he tries to contain into something more sympathetic. He clasps his paws together under his chin.

“Go on.”

“He’s been acting very weird, too. Implying that I can’t trust you because you only want to exploit my powers. To make sure I never have a life of my own again. He keeps reminding me that I’m technically y’all’s prisoner.” You avert your eyes and focus on helping Kidra scratch right behind their bony face plate where they can’t quite reach until Bunny takes a very controlled exhale. “I mean, he’s not wrong.”

Katherine shifts beside you. “I guess from a certain perspective, no, he’s not.” She holds out a hand to shut Bunny up. “But we don’t think of you that way. We’ve been trying to keep you safe from the fearlings and shadows, especially since they went rogue. Between your power over creativity and how you’ve amplified others’ magic, of course they’re going to try to come after you, try to use you to their own advantage—”

“And logically, I _know_ that. I really do, but…” You fiddle with your cup. The mix of cinnamon, chilis, chocolate, and what you’re pretty sure is tangerine spreads around you and grounds your confused senses with its mix of holistic contradictions. “I’ve grown to trust him and rely on him so much over the last year or so. Hearing him say these things, well, I want to believe him. I want to believe he just has my best interests in mind.”

“Didn’t he lie to you for, like, months ‘bout who he was?” Bunny says. He waves off Katherine, who’s flailing in an attempt to shut him up. “While all the while attackin’ you with the shadows and usin’ your power as the basis for his own gains?”

His hard expression doesn’t change as you tear up and tense, ready to bark back a response about how things are complicated and he doesn’t know so maybe he should just— You let out your breath, close your eyes, and let the tears run down your face instead. You deflate, and he nods.

“But at the same time,” you say, “There was a gentleness about him.” You stare him in the eyes. “Do you know how many times he could have killed me? Or kidnapped me? Or really, _really_ made an effort to crawl into my mind and manipulate me any way he wanted? Do you really understand how long he had me at his mercy, but didn’t hurt me?”

“Tigers don’t change their stripes,” Bunny shoots back effortlessly. He leans back, crosses one leg over the other, and takes a long sip of his drink. “He’s wicked by nature, and there’s no changin’ that.”

Your insides run cold until they freeze. The first instinct that rushes through you is to agree wholeheartedly. Of course he’s correct. It’s completely logical. And that well-practiced acceptance falls in like a familiar tsunami, instantly making you feel comfortable in your perceptions of the world.

 _Of course,_ you think. _Of course—_

_NO!_

The blast of defiance claps against your body, instantly thawing your insides and accelerating your heart rate. Anger. Determination. White, hot inspiration and euphoria. All of it mixing together to create a cocktail that fiizzes to a head inside you, spilling forth as you start shaking your head and grinding your teeth.

“You don’t really believe that,” you say.

Bunny chokes on his drink. He makes a show of coughing before saying, “Excuse me?”

“You can’t believe that.” You lean forward in your seat, lump growing in your throat.

“And just why…” He mirrors you and you’re closer than ever, eyes not moving from each other’s. “Why can I not actually believe that bad people are just bad?”

“I didn’t come here to ask you to kill him for me.” He shakes his head as you try to change the subject. “I want to make sure he hasn’t been possessed again—”

_“Answer me.”_

“You’re not obligated to fix him!” Katherine says, leaning into the edges of your vision. You focus on her for a second.

“I know that,” you reply. The response comes out strained as you fight yourself to the point of violent trembling. “But I want to give it one more shot. One. More. Try. To see if I can get through to him again.

“I came here for the help you offered—” You return to mutual glaring at Bunny. “—because I can’t do it on my own. Not with what’s going on.”

“Answer. Me.”

“I need your help to fight him, and hopefully remind him why he’s important to me as he’s become, not as he was.”

Bunny stands and shoves his face to yours. The gourmet chocolate concoction hurls from him with every threat of a breath he takes.

“Give me a proper answer. Now. Why couldn’t I actually believe bad people are bad by nature?”

You push back, raising yourself to your feet. Challenging his overconfident and ignorant gaze,

“Because if you really believed that,” you say, strangling your newest anxiety attack in its crib, “You would have never have tolerated _my_ efforts. You would have never held out hope for _me_ to change.” You whip out the note Bunny had attached to the petal bottle. “But you did. And _I_ want to keep believing that it’s possible for anyone—including my massacre-abetting self—to get better.”

Bunny holds his position for a moment, and you feel Katherine start to stand. Her arm starts moving between you two. But he closes his eyes, sighs, and collapses back into his chair, taking a long swig of his cup. He gestures for you to sit as well, and he rubs his forehead, digging in to one specific spot above his left eye.

You float back to your chair, the rush of blood creating a weightless sensation, verging on nausea, that courses through you. And you get to work forming a plan.

“And of course, step four,” your old therapist had said, “is ‘I want to _help myself_ solve this problem.’”


	49. Weathering the Consequences

The sky and the ground merge into one, endless wall of merciless white. Pitch grows dizzy as he’s the only thing that stands out among the stark landscape, the only three-dimensional object sloshing across a flat plane. But regardless, he must press on.

By the third day, Pitch’s cheeks and fingertips have stopped burning, they’ve gotten so cold. It reaches him even through his gloves and hood, and if he had been doing this only a few months earlier, he doesn’t think he’d be making as much progress as he is now. Spring at the north pole is a far cry from the same time of year in the spirit’s forest, but it’s just as helpful, just as comforting.

If only the entity and their angry precipitation weren’t slowing him down.

He’d been sure whatever they are would spring on him the instant he set out onto the ice by himself. But they continue to keep their distance, showering him with icy rain daggers and gusts of out-of-season snow flurries. Pitch keeps checking the his compass to make sure he’s still roughly on track, as he cannot even use the stars much anymore to find his way. Granted, the cloud cover and disastrous temperatures of the dark would do him in—or at least delay him—if that’s all he could use to navigate. As would his memory’s insistence on searching for other stable stars to follow, rather than the one humans use to guide their ways.

Over the next few days, he pushes himself forward, mile after mile, working his way through each shying night, each lingering day. He tries to keep track of how long it’s been, but the human world of clocks and regular day cycles ended at the last airport. It’s a difficult trek, and he sprints for long sessions just to get to where he needs to go. He knows he’s pushing it. There’s an impostor filling his space at Sanderson’s home, and he can’t push himself too hard or else he’ll have no chance to speak his piece once he finally shows up. But the spirit, his spirit… he must get there and check on them before the two weeks embargo lifts.

Day… five? Yes, the fifth day opens with a few dots appearing on the horizon. They appear in an odd pattern: two small black spots hover above a larger, central spot. Three of them bob somewhere in the near distance, occasionally seeming to turn and disappear before reappearing.

 _Pay them no mind,_ Pitch says to himself. He’s trying to save his energy and not speak. It hurts enough as the constant cold crystallizes up and down his throat as he pants. _Whatever apparition this is should be benign enough to pass from afar._

As he comes up on the floating dots, however, he sees a mound surrounding them take shape. Then three shapes. One of them yawns, revealing a set of sharp teeth. Pitch stops as the mother polar bear rises from where she’s been watching her two cubs. He feels almost human, or whatever Golden Age people were. So diminished in the face of a wild animal versus his lack of defenses. He has never before on this planet felt so vulnerable. The mother bear calls to her cubs, who run behind her as she starts to roar at him.

 _Just a warning,_ he reminds himself. _Not violence, just a parent warning potential danger off._

She lopes a few yards to him, pulling back in a feint and calling out again.

A lightning bolt slams down barely twenty yards away. The cubs scream and scatter, and the mother chases after them, spooked by the flash and loud noise. Pitch lets out a deep breath, loosening his form where he’s become tense. He looks around, jumping in his skin as the entity reveals itself, arm outstretched, sparks jumping between its fingers. He watches them for a second. They move their gaze back his direction, and he swears they startle right before the clouds, wind, and fog swirl back to obscure it again. He tries to wait for them to come out, but every second wasted is time he should use to move onward. But he occasionally looks behind him, just to check.

It might be on the seventh day since he set out on the ice when the sky darkens all around him. A dome of haze and clouds and dervishes of snowflakes almost knock him off-balance.

“Nice try,” he grumbles, catching himself and pushing through. “You’ll have to do better than that, howev—”

A wind swoops in and topples him to the ground. He digs himself off the packed ice, trying to wipe his face off without letting the slightly melting chips freeze his eyes together. He starts to stand, and then another one drives him back down. The wind howls and whistles around him now, and he swears the pressure rises more akin to a tempestuous tornado.

“Nope.” He digs his hands into the ground and drags himself against the wind. He reaches a crouched position. Then he stamps one foot into the ice. Once it’s stable, he pushes himself up, and plants the other down, turning to brace himself. “Kill me later, whatever you are! Let me reach the Pole to warn my…” What are they all to him now? Certainly not friends. Mild acquaintances? “I must at least warn one spirit there of the danger lurking under their nose!”

Just below the wind, an angry cry picks up. A haunting, primal scream, rising and dipping and echoing as it travels around and around. Pitch claps his hands over his ears as it rocks him to his core, sounding as much within him as it does when it bounces from icy ridge to deep crevasse. He fights against it, barely staying standing as the horrible, thundering noise shakes his knees.

“What! Do! You! Want!” he screams back. “Make your demands, let me visit the Pole, and then either kill me or leave me in peace!”

The scream resolves into a voice. “You have ravaged the stars, destroyed civilizations, caused havoc on this planet for as long as the humans can remember.”

The voice circles around him, and the wind follows the motion, dying down the least bit. New fear blossoms in Pitch; this thing knows of life beyond this world. That alone doesn’t surprise him, as he’s sure any sentient primordial would consider life beyond their home planet as entirely possible, if not too easy a task to offer enough interesting events to keep themself entertained.

“You have lied. Cheated. Possessed. Corrupted.” The entity appears among the swirling snow, peering at him. They spit at him, like a half-hidden sob, “But above all, you abandoned your old life. Turned your back on everything you stood for. Everything you said you cared about.”

The voice gets closer and closer, stops reverberating though him and reaches him like any other. The wind slows until their shrunken outline pulls up in front of him, just out of full sight and reach.

“Are you one of the shadows?” he asks. “Are you hear to intercept and terrorize me? Because I will not be moved so easily.” He redoubles his stance, ready for the next wave of wind.

The snowflakes stop in midair, paused from the ground to about ten feet up. A layer of flakes pile up above him, and after a few minutes, what little nuance he can make of the Arctic landscape is completely hidden, the area barely lit from the outside. On the far side of the area, a darkening spot forms altogether as the fog and swirling snow have cut off.

“Do not insult me,” the entity says in a feminine voice. Cold, furious, and commanding. Ethereal, still resounding like an uncanny, indistinct call from a wild woods. “Even I could not stoop as low as you.”

“No offense, but I’ve stalked people before, and this is the definition of the activity,” he snarls. “We have tactics in common, though given your tone of voice, I’m sure you could give me an endless list of how we’re hardly the same.” He takes a step forward, partly to break his feet from the ice and partly to see this being properly. They're still frustratingly obscured. “Now, either tell me what you want from me, or get out of my way! I have important business at the Pole.”

“I was under the impression you had no allies except your shadows.”

“The shadows abandoned me, so I started helping the Guardians. Take it as a lesson not to cross me or I will turn on you.” He takes another step, disturbing a chain of suspended snowflakes. “Let me pass!”

“Don’t condescend to me! You have no right!” The dome above them cracks, and a few flakes fall through, bumping into the frozen ones until they all hit the ground.

“I don’t know who—or what—you are!” He looks the shape up and down, squinting to try and force it into something familiar-looking. “Should I?”

“Consider me a ghost of your past, then. Back to haunt you for your crimes.”

“I’ve already got a few of those, thank you very much. Not many, but that’s the consequence of a little weakness when trying to guard against the shadows, apparently.” He pauses and shakes his head, muttering, “No, that’s not fair. That could have happened to anyone…”

“‘Anyone?’” A few more cracks form in the dome. “‘Anyone’ could have abandoned their family in their time of desperation? ‘Anyone’ could have forgotten their duties? ‘Anyone’ could have fallen from the most magnificent heights to the most odious lows?” They shake as they laugh, flurries whipping up around his ankles. “I’ve seen enough families over the years to see that not just anyone is capable of that. Only the worst the universe has to offer.”

“Then kill me,” he says, throwing his arms wide. “You clearly know me from my days in the Golden Age. Which is far more than I know about myself most days! And you hate me. Fine! Then kill me and move along with your life.”

The entity pauses for a moment, and despite there being no new, loud cracks, part of the dome opens enough to let the layer of snowflakes tumble to the ground, a gentle sprinkling of others following behind.

“You…” They shift where they stand, their form shimmering like a mirage. They shake their head and mumble something along the lines of, “No excuse…” They raise their head back up to him, backing up a smidge when they catche Pitch having moved forward a few more paces. “You cannot honestly expect me to believe that you’ve simply forgotten your previous life?”

“I don’t know who you are,” he repeats, gentler this time.

If he’s gauging this correctly, something he’s saying has thrown them off-balance. Their petulant tone now is so human. To think, they were little more than a distant being these previous two weeks. No, this being is not like Selene, as he had wondered. This being is much too young to be as mysterious and fickle as the blind eye of the moon.

He continues, “I don’t know who I am supposed to be to you, either. All I know of my life before crashing to this planet is that I used to be known as Kozmotis Pitchiner. I was a general. A hero, to some. I had a family, and I was happy. And then the shadows stole all of it away, and then took me with them.”

“You became Pitch Black.”

“In name and soul. Until very recently.” The corner of his mouth twitches into a small smile. “The fearlings and Nightmare Men had found enough power to work autonomously again, and after making one single decision, they cut loose from whatever hold I’d inadvertently gained over them when they possessed me.” He takes yet another step. “But enough about me, please. I hate myself too much to keep talking about me. Who are you? And why do you hate me?”

“Are you Pitch Black anymore?”

He takes a deep breath. Like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

“No!” he shouts. He clears his throat and says again, quieter, “No. I don’t think I can claim his name anymore, though I’m sure plenty will still call me that name out of… habit. Or spite. Who—”

“Then are you Kozmotis Pitchiner again?

Sanderson had asked him that same question months ago, right before the spirit had called him to their side. He had been quite sure then that he was Pitch Black for everyone except the spirit. A tingling squeeze runs up his little finger, and Rina’s wide, ecstatic eyes appear before him. He can just hear her talking to him. To Kozmotis.

So much of the world knows about Kozmotis now.

“No,” he replies. “I’m not him. I’m just Kozmotis, a man with no history and no future. Not if I don’t get to the Pole in time.”

“‘Just Kozmotis…’”

There’s another pause, and more of the dome falters, causing a whole pile of snowflakes to crash to the ground or cover his shoulders. The entity loses more of their grip on the weather surrounding them, and Pitch dares to take a few more steps forward.They summon a swirl of flakes and disappear. 

He searches all around him. Easy enough to do, as the rogue weather more or less stops as soon as the entity vanishes. The only exception is the unnatural cloud cover, which continues to blot out the sky and confuse his inner clock.

“Hello?” he calls. No wind or lightning or thunder responds. “Is that all? One confrontation, one interrogation, and you’re done for the moment?”

_“Shadow man?”_

He nearly collapses in surprise and joy. “Lady Selene!” he cries, turning in circles and watching the overcast sky. “I am here! I’m heading to the Pole as fast as I can—”

_“I had thought there was something odd about you recently. But it was not you. Interesting.”_

“No, it’s one of the Nightmare Men. Listen, can you take this news to the spirit? They should be able to speak with the Guardians and…” There’s a droning sound rising around him. “And…”

The wind whips up again, and he sees the entity looming nearby, staring at the sky. They’re growling. Reaching out a single fist, they tighten the clouds and darken the sky completely. He can barely hear the neutral intonation, and it’s completely reduced to unintelligible mumbles.

“Enough!” he yells. There’s a small splash of snow that jumps out from him as he balls his fists together and turns to face the being. A new energy flows through him, encouraging him onward, feeding his righteous frustration. “Do you give a damn about my crimes or not?”

The entity just watches him, hunching as it sways. He thinks he can hear them muttering and rumbling, but their words do not reach him. He shakes his head again, swallowing against the ice burns that creep down his throat with every breath inhaled and every word shouted. He drags out his compass, checks it, and continues to follow the route north.

“I’m on a tight deadline,” he calls over his shoulder. “If you want to yell at me again, find me at the Pole.”

He trudges for another few hours, dragging himself forward on the promise of seeing the spirit safe and warm, as well as seeing the Nightmare Man evaporating into a pool of dead shadows. And, perhaps, also on the hope that he can finally have another conversation with a being who actually responds and surprises him.

He starts to run. Slowly, after the first two times he slips and nearly bashes his skull against the ice, but at a faster pace than merely walking. He’s closer than ever, should be there in one more day if he slows down, conserves more of his energy. But he’s been delayed too many times. He must go, must make it before the new moon when either the Nightmare Man will be released to wreak havoc, or the fearlings attack.

Or both…

The ice quakes underneath him. He panics and starts wildly looking around to see where it’s coming from. Loud cracks echo across to him, and he just barely see a chunk of a glacier slough off and crash to the ground. To his other side, the ice creaks, a jagged fissure zig-zagging parallel to him.

“‘Just Kozmotis,’ hm?”

He snaps around to search for the entity, only to be met with a wall of ice, lifting in a wave across the land, heading straight for him. On instinct, he crosses his arms across himself and ducks his head just before the wall hits him. There’s a moment, right before impact, where a warm sensation douses him. And then he’s shoved forward a few paces. He peeks out, and sees the wall drift farther away, a hole in the middle where he’d expected to be swept up. He doesn’t have time to think about it when another bunch of ice catches him, pressing him against it as it moves.

And moves. And keeps moving. Northward.

He clambers to the top of the icy heap. The entity glares at him as they hold their hand out and manipulate the mound. He triple-checks the direction they’re taking him, and then crouches in a ready stance, waiting either for this new enemy to finish him, or for this new ally to aid him to the end.


	50. New Moon Eve

The structure Jack and Sandy had put up about a mile from the Pole is small, cramped, and barren. To be fair, they’d made it as a temporary structure, and barely a week or so later, it’s showing it. The only attempts at comfort are two hastily-carved, mismatched chairs and a rough, splintery table. You wonder if you could talk them into giving it to you whenever you’re able to return to your home. It fits the shoddy aesthetic, at the very least, and sandpaper isn’t hard to find.

You alternate between smushing yourself next to Kidra as much as you can and pacing the room to keep warm. When did waiting become difficult? You had spent seventy-five years not doing anything, and now a few hours is excruciating.

There’s a buzzing in your pocket, and then a small patch of warmth spreads out on your side. You reach in and see the orange, marbled crystal Bunny and Katherine had helped enchant glowing. Two short blinks, one long blink.

They’ve dropped the info. Bunny and Sandy should be vacating the Island for a moment, so it’s only a matter of minutes until Pitch goes on the move. You stick to pacing to work out some of your anxiety, as well as to stay awake.

The new salve on your shoulder tingles in a way that feels like something’s growing. Not in the sense of the mark spreading, but as if lichen or moss is making itself at home. You have to rub your fingers on a knitted scarf, running the texture of the bumpy, scratchy garter stitches, in order to take your mind off of it. But adding a bit of Bunny’s expertise has allowed you to put less sand in to the mix, so you can try to keep the mark at bay while not risking sleep as badly. The texture makes you want to throw up, though.

Thirty minutes later, the crystal buzzes again. Two long, one short. He’s gone from the cell.

Your stomach clenches, and the idea that you’re doing something wrong—betraying him, sentencing him to a terrible fate—starts to take over. Looking at it from afar, you know you’ve already passed that threshold; if there is a betrayal, it happened as soon as you entered the Warren. You bury your face into Kidra’s shoulder and scream. That helps with the pent-up energy a bit, but it’s a mental war of attrition for the thoughts themselves. You force yourself to sit at the makeshift table calmly.

A few minutes later, Kidra jumps up behind you and grumbles. Right after, his arms wrap around your shoulders.

“You were harder to find this time,” Pitch says next to your ear. “Why aren’t you at the Pole? Surely it’s warmer there. Better question, however…” He grips your wrists, leaning his weight over you. This is the closest, most intimate he’s been since the equinox, and you can hear his smug smile in his next sentence. “Why did you feel so compelled to escape that you set off an explosive in the North Pole? Unless…” He clucks and hums. “Unless you’re actually heeding my advice about running from these—”

“I need to talk to you.” You grab his hand and unwrap him from you, swinging him over to the table beside you. He sits on it, looking down at you. He starts to play with your hair, but you pull back. You stand, meeting him at the same level.

“I’m worried about you,” you say. “I don’t think that you should be messing with the shadows again, not after what they did to you before.”

He bares his teeth in an empty smile. “I think I know what I’m doing. I’ve been dealing with them for centuries.”

“According to you, they were the ones who suppressed your memories of your past life. Back in your lair, you were getting aggravated that the Nightmare Men were demanding you at so many meetings. You—”

“I did not appreciate their ingenuity until I was fully exposed to the incompetent control of the Guardians.” He gazes off into the distance, in the direction of the Pole. “Why tie yourself down to a council of selfish spirits?”

He leans in until he’s barely a few inches from your face. You try to move away, but he sneaks a hand to the center of your back, holding you in place. You have to take a deep breath before leaning as far away from him as possible, trying to keep proper distance for this sort of talk.

He continues, “You don’t need to waste your talents on their lack of vision. Or on the extremely narrow morals they work in. Not when you could use those talents to their fullest extent.”

He bores his gaze into yours, his golden-silver eyes so familiar, so comforting, so hard to tear away from. You squeeze your own eyes shut and concentrate. And also to prevent any tears from falling too soon.

“I think you’re making a mistake. I think you’re going down a dark path—” He snorts. “—and it’s going to bite you in the ass just like last time. I don’t know what happened, but you’re a completely different person like this. A worse one, in my opinion.”

There’s a moment of silence before he laughs softly. “Are you attempting to break up with me?”

“N—” You take a deep breath. “I can’t do this for much longer without completely breaking. And I don’t think you’d be any better off marinading in the shadows’ mindfuckery.”

“Not alone.”

His arm shoots out and catches your neck. He’s got you mostly by the shoulder, but the pressure is there, pinching the mark. You sputter, trying to pry his hand off of you, stumbling back into Kidra as they try to rush forward. You slip out of his grip, contorting as you collapse. But before you can hit the floor, his hand snags through your hair, pulling the back of your head. Just under the pain in your neck and the ripping hair, your stomach turns, and you feel your shoulder twinge. The urge to run for your life blooms directly from the unspent anxious energy from earlier.

He drops you. You collapse next to Kidra, who steps over you and growls. They grant him one second of warning before lunging. The next thing you hear is them yelping and sliding across the small area, a thud shaking the whole thing as they hit the opposite wall. You try to pull yourself up, try to breathe normally and ignore the dry, raw cracking around your nostrils, to push back the image of the ugly smile, the darkness, the abuse. A boot comes down on your back, hard. You can’t breathe.

“Really?” comes the snide voice above you. “That’s honestly all it would have taken to break you? Here we were wasting our time on… sentimentality, lies, and persuasion when the trigger was right there.” Your struggles for escape are cut off as a rough hand grips the back of your head and pushes you into the ground. “It’s an honor to know we made quite the impression, though.”

A sudden change. No answers. Eagerly attributing his success to the shadows.

“Oh,” you manage, right before Kidra bellows somewhere above you. Their loud call is met with yells and orders coming from all the people hidden outside the structure as chaos breaks loose. The one, minute flash of relief in your heart is overwhelmed by freezing terror trying to shove you back into that cage yet again.

*************

He struggles to keep his eyes open against the wind. A thin stripe of moisture freezes along his cheeks where it’s dragged from his eyeballs. According to the compass, they’re still on the right track. According to his own knowledge of where the Pole actually resides, they’re almost there. Barely a few minutes away, even. He chances a glance back to the entity. Still keeping pace a distance away. Still moving him toward the Pole faster then three of him could run on a snaking mound of snow. Still mysterious and radiating a quiet fury he’s definitely sure they believe he has caused.

The snow gets denser around them, thickening to a point that he feels the ground under him slow just a bit. A flourish of wind rockets into the air where it immediately dies. There’s a deep _tsk_ behind him.

 _So, this is not their doing,_ he says to himself. _Just the luck of the weather._

The entity swivels their head and searches in front of them, or perhaps merely struggles to concentrate. They shudder and twitch, and then the ground completely halts, tossing him off. He curls in on himself, protecting his head not only on instinct but also because he’s just barely recovering from a shattered skull and would rather not repeat the migraines and dizziness. He skids to a stop much farther away than he thought he should be. Behind him is a long, oddly wide trail like a lazy, round scoop taken from a tub of ice cream, leading right back to the entity. His body pulses for a moment, summer shower warmth swirling down his spine. And then he shivers as it evaporates.

The entity shakes themself out, holding their head—or what he’s been pretty sure this whole time is a humanoid head. Their form flickers. The haze around them thins for just a moment, enough for him to glimpse a more human shape, hear human-like growls of frustration. And then he feels it, too.

Creeping static. Paralyzing thoughts. Choking breaths. Unease hiding behind eyelids, ready to jump out as soon as the eyes close.

There’s an echo of shouts to his right, very close by. He shields his face against the whipping wind. There’s a small outcrop of ice a quarter mile away, onto which a flood of darkness pours. Odd darkness. Moving darkness. A dark so dense it would weigh down the average nighttime gloom.

“There!”

He stumbles on the ice, drags himself back up, and trudges as fast as he can toward the black. He gets only a few dozen yards, sweating and panting as he fights the drifts, and then he notices the entity isn’t following. Looking back, he sees them swaying side to side where he’s left them.

“Well?” he calls. “You’ve come all this way for nothing?” Their head snaps to him, but he stands firm. He shrugs and gestures. “This is as far as you go? Don’t even want to harass me anymore?”

No answer. He shakes his head and brushes them off, returning to his journey. At that moment, several columns of shadows shoot up from around what he can now see is a decrepit shed. The roof collapses in as the densest, most slithering tendril bursts upward. It has something by its foot.

“Kidra!”

The poor creature flails, trying to slice the tendril, but it reconstitutes itself far too quickly. There’s a sharp whistle, and his heart soars. Then it plummets. It has them, the spirit. Worse, it's not contained n the cell. And it’s flying up and over.

“No,” he says. He cuts through the ice and snow. “No!”

He forces his way to the top layer of the landscape, sliding and skipping close to the surface of it all. Unlike the previous few days, once he gets going, his footing is light and warm and sure. He’s thankful to find a patch of packed ice, and his speed increases, Faster, faster. The structure comes closer, along with the shadows and the situation clarifies as the goose girl swoops over the scene on the back of her pet.

A whole swarm of fearlings spreads outwards from the center of the destroyed hut, active even despite the lingering sunset. The rabbit is cursing and swinging his weapons around, kicking at the nearest shadows and stealing wide-eyed glances up at the tendril taking the spirit to the ice cliff. He wrenches free and clears a small area around him, waving at the goose girl. She lets out a powerful shout, flattening the area for a moment. The rabbit tenses, and then launches himself into the air, grabbing the goose girl’s arm as she passes overhead. He settles into the saddle and she kicks the bird toward the cliff.

He has never been happier to see people who hate him.

He reaches the cliff and ignores the bite of intense cold at his fingertips as he starts to climb. It must work, because like his feet just a moment ago, his fingers warm inside his gloves, cutting through the icy handholds with a flash. Hand over hand, muscles straining, arms tingling painfully again as the nearly-healed bones grind against each other. A biting wind whistles up. He tenses, clinging to the ice and digging in so as not to fall. But he’s ripped away from the ice, and his stomach—freed into the void of zero gravity—rattles around his ribcage for a second. Just one moment, however, as the wind swirls under him, keeping him aloft.

He glances around. The entity, of course. Stiff, fingers curled, watching. He swears he hears them sigh. Nevertheless, the wind raises him steadily.

There’s a shriek from above, and he looks up in time to hear a small explosion, and see another tendril shoot into the sky, carrying something. He strains to see whether is the spirit or not, but something blots out the sky before he can focus.

Kidra hits the edge of the cliff, and then drops off. He licks his lips and whistles. They don’t respond. He whistles again, louder. Still, the creature falls limply, though their ears flicker back and forth. He takes one more breath, and the single-pitched note screams from his lungs. Kidra swivels their ears to him, and then point with their head. They flip in the air as they pass him, long talons scraping the ice, trying to slow down. Barely three seconds later, they’re clambering up the ice wall parallel to him. They growl for a moment, and then he reaches out his hand to them, letting them sniff and examine it. There’s a moment when he thinks they might just bite him, but Kidra finally bleats in happiness, trying to nuzzle against him so hard he nearly falls out of the controlled wind below him.

“Yes, hello there!” he chuckles, rubbing the tip of their ear. He then glances down at the entity. “Thanks for the lift.”

He grabs Kidra’s short, wiry mane and hauls himself over their neck. One more whistle sends them both up the cliff at a much faster, much more relieving pace. The edge draws nearer, nearer, finally within reach. Kidra scrambles back onto the flat top, and he can see the source of the upheaval. His stolen face snaps over, not so much turning as it does simply face him. He sits up on Kidra, shoulders back, chest out, not caring that the display is hidden behind a puffy, ridiculous coat. How can he possibly care when the monster before him is dragging his spirit by the hair? They’re digging their fingernails into the hand at the back of their head, though, hands raging with their gorgeous, iridescent magic. That’s enough for him to know they’re all right, if barely. It won’t be too much longer. He locks eyes with his doppelganger.

“Let them go, or regret ever attaining enough sentience to process pain.”


	51. Orbital Pull

You fluctuate between the cage and the Arctic. The repulsion flares up violently within you, especially as the Nightmare Man drops half of its glamour and summons mounds upon mounds of fearlings from the shallow shadows around the immediate area. You’re yanked up into the air, your scalp desperately trying to stay together as it transports you wherever. At the edge of your consciousness, you can hear Bunny, Katherine, and the few Raconturks screaming as some level of hell crashes into reality.

Crashes and conflicts with the icy sensation of being trapped and unable to know when you can even contemplate freeing yourself. It feels like just yesterday and a whole lifetime ago when you jolted headfirst from dreamland into one of your worst nightmares. And you hadn’t really been able to stop or take a moment to breathe until long after. After the _slam, slam, slam_ into the iron bars, you coasted over an eldritch maw and fought through shadow after shadow until… until…

You shoulder burns this time. It hasn’t hurt this bad since that day you escaped Pitch’s lair, when the Nightmare Man dug a delicate finger half an inch below your skin and infected you with madness. You blink as the shadows unwrap from around you and your knees hit flat ice. As you fight against the spinning world, you can see it’s taken you to the top of an ice cliff, hopefully the one the shack was nestled next to. That’s not too far away.

 _Where’s Kidra?_ You think you can hear them bellowing nearby.

The Nightmare Man yanks on you hair and your reach up, digging your nails into its false flesh. Your power winds up on instinct, and you can feel it covering your hands. Now, you try to concentrate. Last time, you had to think fast, and you were able to make a fragile, physical manifestation of it. And it worked.

You stop struggling against the hold except to cling to the creature so it doesn’t rip off half your head, and you inhale deeply, breathing with your stomach like one of your therapists had showed you. She’d had a beautiful singing voice, too, and you’d asked why she didn’t pursue a vocal career.

“Some things we’re cut out for as a long-term investment. Other things just enhance that investment and make it worth seeing til the end.”

You hold the breath for a few seconds and close your eyes. There’s a grunt above you, and the Nightmare Man jostles you, growling. There are a few flashes of regrets: Arden choking, their face slumping; Jordan’s terror running from invisible spirits; piles upon piles of papers graphically detailing the Incident and how they could improve future projects from the side effects they witnessed.

“Stop it,” you say, carefully letting the breath hiss out of you. “This isn’t helpful right now.”

“Your fault… Your weight… To bear…” The Nightmare Man’s voice slips from the familiar cadence of Pitch’s into the slow, chilling one that permeated his lair. And you can’t refute the sentiment. Your breath hitches, shallowly drawn in through your chest, and there’s not enough of it to go around. “Cannot… Help being… Poisonous…”

You scream, emptying your lungs again, digging your nails in further. The magic starts crackling around you, and there’s a small laugh, another jostle.

 _Focus, focus, focus!_ Breathing was a good first step, and you set yourself back on that route, while also saying to yourself, _Helpful thoughts… A plan, I need a plan. Not a good plan. Not a sound strategy. Just a plan right now to retreat and regroup, even if there’s little hope and I can’t hear my friends and there’s shadows everywhere and I—_

_Plan. Plan._

There’s a small yelp from Kidra, and then you hear them skid across the ice. They get near again—so close you can feel their panting on your face—and then the Nightmare Man moves quickly. Yet another, long yelp comes from Kidra, but this time it falls farther and farther away. Your insides lurch again, and you try to get your feet under you. The creature holds you fast, though.

_Plan. Plan. Plan._

The magic nearly wrenches out of your control as the Nightmare Man reaches out with its own. It pulls toward the crackling now creeping over your hands and fingers and onto its arm.

 _It pulls toward mine…_ you remember. All the magic you’ve encountered pulls toward yours. You never had much of a sports career beyond casual archery, but even that has the concept of follow through. _Because if you don’t work with the tension, it’ll wreck you and throw you off-balance._

You open your eyes and put more power into the magic, sweat drops threatening to blind you as you simultaneously struggle to keep it from spreading further away from you.

“Come on…” you whisper. “Come on, go for it.”

You stare at the mostly flat white underneath you, letting your gaze soften and go fuzzy. All the better to concentrate.

Poison is always in the most inviting and innocuous bottle.

“Let them go.” Pitch’s voice is back. Not above you, but across the way. You desperately want it to be the real him, but you stamp down that hope, that want to take a look in favor of goading the Nightmare Man’s magic onward.

*************

A sharp, toothy smile creeps across the Nightmare Man’s sorry excuse of a veneer. It widens its eyes for a moment as he announces his presence, but it looks on, eyes flashing, fist clenching at its side. He suddenly realizes he’s unarmed and powerless, and he fails to quell the humiliating bolt of fear that rises up. The Nightmare Man homes in on it, raising one hand up and summoning a pool of black around the edges of the cliff, trying to cut them off from everything else. Kidra lurches forward, and as he quiets them, he can see multiple tendrils of darkness reaching towards him, emanating enough menace to bring even the most steadfast and courageous to their knees. The spirit jolts under their grasp as the darkness closes in, plenty of it grabbing right for them. 

“I gave you your one and only chance,” he says, hunkering down over Kidra. “By all means, let me know if it starts to hurt.”

He barely nudges Kidra, and they lunge like a rubberband snapping as it breaks from pulling too taut. The creature tries to grab the Nightmare Man in its long foreclaws, but misses as it deconstructs part of its form into disparate shadows to dodge. He has to pull back hard on Kidra’s mane before they slip over the other side of the cliff, right into the waiting shadows. They round back for another go.

The Nightmare Man backs up a few paces, too close to the edge for his liking. He takes a sick comfort in knowing that—judging by how much larger the mark is—they’re trying to take the spirit alive and finish the corruption. A long, delicate process, unless one doesn’t care if you get a powerful shadow or a mere fearling footsoldier. But the point is that it won’t let too much harm come to them. 

“Pitch… Black…” it growls.

“Haven’t seen the news lately?” His heart hammers in his chest, flailing against the atmosphere of dread. He clenches his fists in Kidra’s mane, another warm sensation spreading from his fingers throughout his body. The sensation of something wrapping around his pinky finger returns for a moment, and he swears there’s some sort of flash. With all of the blinding snow and swirling powers and his exhaustion, it’s probably just a hallucination. Regardless, he sits up again and looks around at the shadows, announcing, “The kids these days call me ‘Kozmotis.’”

A wind kicks up from behind him and Kidra, and the expression on its face flickers into… goodness, is that confusion?

“Alive…” it hacks out, glaring beyond him. “ALIVE.”

It backs up a few paces, nearly plummeting, but it manages to catch its feet on the shadows, dragging the spirit along. Its eyes track wildly until its slinks away, dashing over a bridge of shadows. Kozmotis situates himself, ready to signal Kidra to leap. Halfway to another, jutting pillar of ice half a mile away, however, there’s suddenly a sucking noise and most of the shadows spiral into what he can only describe as a singularity. There’s a moment of quiet and then a wave of force bursts out from where they were, flinging him off of Kidra’s back.

Kozmotis hauls himself up in time to see the Nightmare Man being flung in the opposite direction—and the spirit flailing as they fall in the air. He screams their name.

Kidra doesn’t wait. They leap from the ice cliff and dive. Kozmotis crawls over to the edge, clinging for dear life as something huge swoops over him. The goose. The goose girl. And the rabbit is in the saddle, as well. He grins up at them as they pass, but in the split-second they make eye contact, the two Guardians watch him, expression turning from determination to confusion. The goose barely makes it to the spirit first, Kidra gliding down to the ice floor and working themself back up for another jump.

"That should be good," he says, returning his focus to the gathering column of darkness on the other ice cliff. Now for the fun part.

Before he can purse his lips to whistle, something wraps around his middle and drags him backwards. He’s stunned, and then the tiredness hits.

“Sanderson?!” he calls hopefully. Sure enough, the golden face of the Sandman slides into view, one eyebrow cocked at the sight of him. “Good timing. Now, release me and we can—”

He swings down the other whip and Kozmotis rolls out of the way as it splashes up sharp ice crystals into his face.

“The hell are you doing?!” he screams, heart racing.

Revenge for fifty years ago can happen but _not now._ And then Kozmotis realizes that Sanderson and the others are probably focusing on the interloper with his face. The Sandman snaps his wrist back for another go, ignoring the pleas scrambling from his mouth. As he tries to swing it back forward, however, it gets stuck. The small spirit yanks and tugs on the rogue whip, letting go of the one binding Kozmotis, turning his back to him.

The other end of the taut whip curls between the clenched, pale brown fingers of a hand. The hand and the forearm it connects to strain to keep hold of the weapon. And just beyond, the rest of the arm fades into the magical haze of the watching entity.

“Spare Kozmotis,” they say softly, though their voice still booms through everything. “For now.”

Sanderson looks from them to Kozmotis and a series of glittering symbols flashes above his head. Surely they can’t see it all from out there, let alone make any sense of—

“Thank you for your concern, old friend,” they reply, tugging the whip free from Sanderson’s grip. It dissipates into grains. “But I’m sure.”

The arm blurs as they retract it back into the mists, and then the entity raises into the air, opening their arms wide, and they summon dark, curling clouds. They swirl around the large area, encompassing the other cliff and the Pole itself. Like the eye of a hurricane, however, the middle is clear, open, and bares the land to the sky above. Selene sits, watching.

“I don’t know what just happened, Sanderson.” Kozmotis brushes himself free of any more sand. “But I swear I’m not the doppelganger.” He points. “But I can direct you to one. On the condition that you take me over there so I can kill it myself.”

Sanderson is already conjuring a small cloud of sand and offering his hand. “Sounds like a deal, Pitch.”

As Kozmotis hauls himself onto the cloud, he rolls his eyes, and sighs, “Call me whatever you like, let’s just go.”

The small spirit grins, setting the cloud into motion. “Sure thing, Kozmotis.”

They barrel through the air, focusing in on the column of ice. As they approach, so does the goose.

*************

You’re being dragged. Off the cliff, but not down. Across shadows. You’ve done this trick before. A long time ago. Not long enough for your satisfaction. You still concentrate on drawing the shadows in, promising them an amplifying boost if they just crawl a little. Bit Further.

Finally, you feel hefty waves of them piling up around the source of your magic, nibbling at the edges like the voracious bacteria it is. A little more. Just a little bit more and—

You take a deep breath and pour all of that energy into forcibly reaching out and dragging the straggling magic and the piles of already waiting into your hands. Above you, the Nightmare Man makes a choking sound, and then there’s a blissful moment of complete silence. At least, the outside world goes silent.

Concentrating on the overloading, compressed magic at your fingertips, you hear nothing but screams and wails. Nothing comprehensible as a language, just eldritch noise sounding like two layers of high- and low-pitched rumbles intertwining with the hypnotic, grating gargle of television snow. You compress it more, the burst of power you give easily molding it under your will. Tighter, tighter, tighter still, you work the magic until you feel it trying to release the stored energy and escape your clutches. And you focus on the world outside again, glancing up at the Nightmare Man. You sink your fingers back into its wrist, and pull, releasing the energy at the same time.

The monster cries out in surprise as you fling it over your head with the help of the resulting expulsion of magic.

But now you’re falling.

As you tumble in the air, you barely see a dark blot dive from the ice cliff. It bellows, and you reach out, trying to control your fall enough to catch Kidra when they’re near. But they don’t get there in time.

Instead, your fall is abruptly cut short by Kailash’s saddle. You see stars, and then you see the actual stars. They stop circling above you after a few seconds, staying in their correct astronomical positions as your dizziness subsides a bit.

“Are ya okay or what?”

Ah. Bunny is nearby. You blink and turn your head. He’s holding his hand out: one covered in green energy, like watercolor brushstrokes, the other holding your bow. You reach for the weapon, miss, and your arm flops over your eyes.

He _tsks,_ moves your arm, and touches you between your eyes. Headache, gone. Dizziness, evaporating. Energy, restoring slowly. To a point at least. It feels more like instant painkiller if the pressure over your eye is any indication. But you’ll deal with the real migraine when you need to.

“Good, now let’s go kill a shadow.” He shoves your bow to you and helps you sit up. Katherine urges Kailash on, and in another moment, you’re circling over the pillar of ice the Nightmare Man has retreated to.

Its mask is slipping. It must have been pulled down with the force of the magic you let loose. Its slumping features have you choking down a lump in your throat, thinking of Arden, overlaying them with Pitch.

_Pitch._

“That’s not Pitch!” you yell to the others, pointing. “It’s one of the Nightmare Men! The one who put on his face last time.”

You swear you hear Bunny whisper, “Dangit…” He glances up at Katherine, and then they both glance back the way you all came.

 _“Your shadow man arrives,”_ Selene says, voice distant above the chaos.

As Kailash spirals downward further and further, a golden cloud closes in to the same cliff. You lean over to see what Sandy’s doing, and nearly jump out of the saddle when you see the figure beside him. You’re not quite close enough to see their face. In seconds, both you and Sandy orbit where you can see his face clearly. The figure next to him—dressed in mismatching blizzard gear—calls out your name and waves.

Pitch. You lean over and look at the similar thing on the ice cliff. It’s tracking the cloud, summoning black, jagged, twitching tendrils all around it. Half of them lean and curl back, as if waiting to strike. You hear your name again. This time, Sandy catches your eye, and he nods and gives a thumbs-up while pointing at the Pitch next to him.

You smile, and follow Bunny as he jumps off the saddle, one leg out for a kick. You land besides him, a little less steady, but you catch yourself before your legs shoot out from underneath you. The Nightmare Man looks around, and then a small wave of shadow reaches up to its face, pulling the mask taut again. The cloud sets down gently, and Pitch—arms behind his back, standing as straight as possible, looking as regal as anyone can in fluorescent winter gear—calmly draws up beside you, Sandy not too far behind.

You summon a specific arrow, nock it, and draw back on the string.


	52. Tethers of Reality

As they swoop down and approach the cliff, Kozmotis hears Selene hum, _“Shadow man… With a silver border to your shadow, now, I see.”_

He has no idea what’s she’s going on about, but he doesn’t let that stop him from concentrating on the doppelganger right in front of him. He pauses long enough to wave to the spirit, and then disembarks the cloud to stand next to them. They’re smiling, and they look well enough. They draw back on their bow, and he wishes it weren’t so cold that they have to wear a coat; he would love to see their back muscles flex as they do.

Sanderson nudges his hand, and slips him a dreamsand sword. Not ideal for someone not immune to the sand, but it’ll work for now. He slices it in front of himself a few times, testing the balance, and then glares up at the Nightmare Man. The creature summons floods of shadows to swirl around it, and it glances up and down the line of people in front of it.

No one moves or speaks for a second. All their eyes dart from one to another, waiting to see who’ll make the first move. As it turns out, none of them.

There’s only a split-second of a harsh, screaming chatter to warn them before a column of fearlings rises up over the edge of the cliff and barrels into the rabbit and goose girl. The spirit screams, losing their stance as the shadows sweep the two Guardians off the cliff and into the swirling column.

The spirit shoves their chosen arrow away and draws a different one from their quiver—their original quiver, he notices. He takes a glance at the Nightmare Man, wondering if his initial thought is correct. He’s going to kill it anyway, but just how much they tried to mess with his spirit may determine how drawn-out its death is. The spirit fires the arrow into the gestalt, the resulting explosion punching a sizable hole. The column leans and starts falling apart, taking the Guardians with it. The spirit lurches forward, and then glances back at the Nightmare Man in front of them.

It grins wildly, tendrils around it growing larger and reaching out.

Barely three seconds later, another cry and tendril of shadow reaches from the other side of the cliff, and Kozmotis swivels and drags the sword up in front of himself before it drags him off.

“Koz!” the spirit yells.

A glint of an arrow shoots past his peripheral vision, and then explodes gold crystal around him. The shadows retract in tandem with a slash from his sword and the bullets courtesy of Sanderson. But as the residue from the explosion fades, the Nightmare Man is gone. They all look around for a moment, including beneath their own feet, but it’s completely disappeared. Kozmotis dares think of this as a moment of respite. He turns to the spirit, who immediately turns to him. They lock eyes, and he darts over to them.

He just manages to reach for one of their hands when there’s a loud, strangled honk from above. Kailash swoops over the cliff, crying out. Just past them, there’s a swirling orb of shadows hovering in their air. The Nightmare Man reappears on top of it, holding one hand out. It clenches its fist, and the orb shrinks. The goose girl and the rabbit batter the sides of it, punching through only for it to resume its swirling immediately.

He and the spirit glance at each other again. The next sound out of their mouth is a sharp whistle.

*************

When Kidra answers your call, you immediately fling yourself over their neck. They wind up, ready for your signal. But you glance back, holding out your hand for Pitch to come with you. No other words, just a hand out. He glances around to Sandy, who’s watching the other side of the cliff for more shadows. He taps Sandy on the shoulder with his sword and motions toward you. Sandy nods once, conjures another cloud of sand, and takes off back to help the others in the wider skirmish.

Pitch turns back and grasps your hand. He situates himself, hesitantly wrapping his arms around your waist.

You whistle. Kidra takes a moment, presumably because of the new weight, but then they launch you both into the sky. He holds himself closer to you, burying his face into your neck and whispering.

“I’m here,” he says over and over, the sound barely reaching above the wind rushing around your ears. “I’m so happy to see you.”

You lean into him, trying to pay attention to the swirling orb coming up fast. “You and I really need to talk about this later, but I am so glad you’re back!”

You turn so that you can barely see him from the corner of your eye. He’s gazing back. He squeezes your waist, and you realize just how off the Nightmare Man’s actions were. So unsure, so ignorant; it had managed to get the look down, but not all of the actions.

“I was having a similar thought, darling,” he says. “But how about we get this part out of the way first?”

You nod. Kailash draws up next to you, still honking pitifully.

“Koz!” you call to him. He hugs your waist just a little closer. “Get on Kailash and steer her around to Bunny and Katherine! I’ll try and disrupt the shield-thing for a second.”

“Of course!”

You nudge Kidra a little bit closer to Kailash, and Pitch reaches for the saddle. You hold your breath as his fingers slip once, twice. He leans back onto Kidra, and then flings himself over to the goose. Unfortunately, Kailash shies and jerks back.

“Kozmotis!” you scream as his grip fails and he starts to fall. You draw up on Kidra and try to make them go into a dive right then. They fidget and bleat before obeying, and you’re worried it might be too late.

As you head down, however, several strands of silver-black shoot up past you and attach to the saddle. The strings go taut, and you pass a fluorescent shape hanging in the air. Kidra swings up and latches on to a jutting pile of ice. You tug on their mane and whistle, and they huff and shake their neck, but comply. You once again launch high into the air and circle lower and lower until you can clearly see Pitch dragging himself up the threads and hauling himself into the saddle.

“What the hell?” you yell when you’re close enough.

He shakes his head, mouth open as he pants and shrugs. On your next pass, he concentrates for a moment and then many more silver strings zip from his fingers. They criss-cross and weave together until there’s a wire-like mass in front of him. He looks up at the moon, then back to the silver.

“We’ll question it later!” he calls back.

You nod and spur Kidra on to pass closer to the swirling shadows, lining up a shot close enough to where Katherine and Bunny are watching you. You release, and a second later, the resulting hole in the orb causes them to start falling from the sky.

 _Come on…_ you scream silently to Pitch. _Come on, come on!_

*************

“Don’t question it. Don’t question it. Don’t question it.”

He chants the phrase to himself to keep himself focused as he situates himself on the neck of the giant bird. She hisses and bucks, but once he pulls the reins around, she follows the lead, slipping closer and closer to the shadowy orb. So close that he can see the horrified and murderous face of the little goose girl when she sees him pull closer. She screams something, and the power pushes a small hole in the orb. For a split-second the sound escapes, a wave of pent-up rage culminating in a swear so vile he’s genuinely stunned she even knew how to string all those words together. But adrenaline conquers any feelings of wariness. He pushes his luck, smiles, and gives her a thumbs up. The rabbit just stares at her as he pauses in his own attack.

Kozmotis summons the warm sensation to his hands again. He keeps an eye on the spirit; they direct Kidra into one more wide arc. Once they fire, he’ll need to move quickly. At first, he thinks with his newfound power, he can just wrangle them with the threads. But as he tries to summon the magic freely, exhaustion hits him like a train.

“Too much too soon, apparently.”

He can’t make a net. But one twisted rope—carefully drawn out to a long enough length—tied around himself is doable. He glances at Selene one more time, then watches the spirit.

They draw. They fire.

He backs up to the other edge of the saddle and bounces on his knees. The arrow makes contact and explodes. Two figures fall from the orb above, tendrils of shadows following them. One reaches out to the other, latching on.

He sprints across the saddle, launching himself off the side to intercept the figures. For a second, he’s afraid he’s too far, or that he took too long. He won’t reach them in time. He swears he feels the tether tightening and he’ll be short.

But as they start to cross paths, he sees the goose girl and rabbit clinging to each other. The rabbit tears his eyes from the spirit, and they widen as he sees Kozmotis approaching, arm out. For a second, Kozmotis thinks the idiot is going to let the both of them fall out of sheer pride, but he scowls and reaches out a paw. Their fingertips meet, and then they grab on to each others wrists just as the tether runs out and yanks him back, cutting around his middle and choking the breath out of him. The rabbit digs his claws into Kozmotis’ skin, and they start to swing away from the shadows. His shoulder strains with the weight of two people hanging off of him, and he swears it’s going to dislocate.

“Climb!” he yells. He tries to stabilize himself and reaches out his leg for one of them to grab. “Hurry!”

The rabbit shifts the goose girl forward, but she starts to scramble away from him.

“No!” she yells. “No, don’t let him near me!”

Her eyes are wild as they focus on his face, and he doesn’t need be an empath to recognize her absolute panic. Falling from the sky, falling from being held aloft by the shadows, being caught… Yes, he remembers. The image of the little girl—trapped in a coffin, asleep and surrounded by endless nightmares—is probably flickering through her violently uprooted memory more viscerally then his. She starts to struggle against the rabbit’s grip, however, and the paw slips a fraction of an inch.

“Don’t—!”

“You either climb up near me to the safety of your goose, or you fall to a very painful end on the ice!” Kozmotis roars, trying to shift and regain a better hold on the rabbit’s paw. It slips farther. “Decide now!”

“Katherine, c’mon, just shimmy up real quick. I’ll be right behind you, I swear.” the rabbit says. “Kailash needs you. Go.”

He shoves her forward, and the goose girl scrambles up. She’s trembling, and the rabbit keeps talking her through the climb, one hand over the other. She passes by his face, and despite him telling her not to look, she meets Kozmotis’ eyes. She freezes.

“Katherine!” The rabbit screams. Kozmotis closes his eyes and turns away. “Katherine, keep going.”

He feels her arms jerk and then she continues, digging her feet into his shoulders. He braces for a kick to the head, but it doesn’t come until the rabbit passes by. It’s a lot softer than he thought it would be. The closest he’ll probably get to a “thank you” from the Pooka. Kozmotis opens his eyes once they’re both ahead of him, rotates his shoulder a few times, and then starts his own ascent.

The rabbit leans over the edge of the saddle and reaches for the silver tethers, then hesitates. Kozmotis freezes. They silently make eye contact, and then the rabbit gets a gleam in his eyes. They widen, realizing. His ears twitch, as does his muzzle, stopping between a manic grin and a wild baring of his teeth.

Kidra swoops over them, and the rabbit blinks, watching them glide away. Whatever the spirit yells doesn’t quite make it over the wind, and they turn for another pass. The rabbit blinks again, then watches the spirit, then glances between the goose girl and far behind them, toward the Pole.

He growls and starts dragging the tethers up until Kozmotis is able to slip into the saddle. And _that_ is the closest he’ll ever get to a “thank you.” He sits on the far end of the saddle, watching the rabbit place himself at the other end, in between him and the goose girl. He crosses his arms and turns to look out over the scene as she banks her pet around to catch up with his spirit.

*************

Katherine and Bunny make it into the saddle, as does Pitch. You sigh in relief, and then start scouring the sky for the Nightmare Man. The shadow orb prison has dissipated completely, and the creature is gone from the top of it. There are a few columns of shadows still twisting around where the remnants of the shack are, but a golden blob sparks around them, joined by electric blue bursts snaking up the columns like lightning, and a green-purple glint. North is probably also somewhere down there, running through a bunch of fearlings on the ground.

Kidra lands on a spike of ice jutting up from the ground, and you take a moment to catch your breath and take in the moment. All of the Guardians, fighting the shadows. Doesn’t seem so unusual for what they preach, but it’s stunning to see it in motion. It’s moving.

“I think I want something like that,” you murmur.

Kidra slings an ear back to you and shifts as they hang. They sniff the air. You rub their neck for a moment, trying to comprehend the notion of going back to your home in the forest after this. You want to; you will. But the Guardians maybe snuck up on you with their enthusiasm and kindness, and even if you had wanted to shut yourself away again, you don’t think you could.

Kailash grows bigger on in the sky. As they get closer, you search, finding Pitch in the saddle. He’s leaning out, looking at you, relaxing as soon as he makes eye contact.

“I definitely want something like this,” you say, reaching out as they pass overhead.

Kidra twitches and starts to leap away. You’re not ready, and you fall, barely catching around their neck with your legs. The momentum keeps you going, until you’re hanging on underneath them, upside-down.

“Kidra stop! Stop moving!” you yell.

They shift a little bit more to the side, and you default back to whistles. They whine and snap at something you can’t see, then shift again. Your legs tremble from the strain. Your core screams next as you try to curl up and right yourself. It takes a few tries, made all the more difficult as Kidra keeps shifting and striking, ignoring your commands. You can hear the passengers on the goose shouting your name.

Once you finally haul yourself up, you try to move into a more comfortable position, and you swing yourself face to face with Pitch.

 _No, that’s the wrong one,_ is your last, pitiful thought as it grabs you by the throat, kicks Kidra so hard they slide down the pillar several yards, and drag you into a pool of rippling, oozing shadows.


	53. Into the Fray

He doesn’t think before launching himself off the saddle, right at the shrinking pool of darkness. Between the panic, he’s screaming at himself at what an idiot he is for giving in to impulse. He listens more closely, and it may just be the rabbit, and who cares what he thinks. Closer, closer. He sails right by Kidra and sinks into the shadows.

The whispers are what he notices first. Deep, moaning whispers detailing empty promises and visceral nightmares. It’s the only thing he can sense for the moment, his eyes finally encountering a dark they cannot see through.

It is void.

It is abyss.

It is the corridors between one place and another.

Compressing and stretching every sensation to the densest numbness and thinnest essence, the shadows surround him and caress him gently. It is the most wrenching feeling Kozmotis has ever imagined possible. How could he have forgotten this? How is it possible that he’s simply shrugged off this, this…

 _This is what the shadows feel like when you’re their enemy,_ a small voice spits. The sentiment dashes through every capillary of his body, sparing no part of him from torment.

And Kozmotis is afraid. Not for the first time since he’s ever been alive, of course, but for the first time since the shadows abandoned him. For the first time in his third incarnation, he is well and truly fearful.

He thrashes in panic, the choking feeling from last time swelling up around his throat. Much worse than two months ago. That little while ago, they were at least going to give him one final chance to take their side. To prove his worth to them. This darkness means to kill him as quickly as it can.

Something squeezes around his little finger, so tightly he thinks it’s going to explode. Suddenly, a thin string appears, tied in a neat bow around his finger, and the other end shoots off. The shadows push away from it, buzzing where they come into contact with the string. The silvery glint is the only thing resembling light in this place, and he follows it like sailors do the North Star.

“Kozmotis!”

He spins around at Rina’s voice. They wouldn’t dare. He shakes his head; they absolutely would, if they were willing to take Alisah. His breathing picks up, but he grits his teeth, trying to grind down the panic until it leaves him. The string curls and squeezes his finger, and there’s a warmth that spreads from the pressure out over his hand, up his arm, and settles at his core.

“Kozmotis!” Rina’s voice travels to him, louder. The string glows brightly, and the shadows shy away even more. More strands blossom around the first thread until it winds together and becomes a rope. He grabs it and holds onto it as he walks through the black corridor, letting the rope and warmth anchor him.

The fear still roils around him, battering his heart so that he feels like he might have an attack and keel over. At these moments, he pauses and squeezes the rope. A different voice joins Rina’s calling his name. He doesn’t recognize it at first, but then an echo of “I think you’re okay!” makes him realize: Collin. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, but he’s not about to take it for granted at this point. Any companionship to reach for in the emptiness.

One hand on the rope, the other clenching and unclenching at his side, he walks on. The anxiety gnawing holes through him like botflies the further he gets. The whispers haven’t stopped, either, and the grounding touch on that tether is the only thing keeping him this side of sane.

 _Where are they?_ Kozmotis wonders after awhile.

He can barely keep the passage of time straight in his mind. It’s been no more than a few minutes, but the lack of exits or anything slightly tangible wears on him. A lump grows in his throat as he imagines how much worse it was for his spirit when they were in his lair. The memories of them diminishing, dark rings around their eyes growing, the excited call of fearlings every time they nodded off flood back to him, accompanied by guilt.

His fault. He didn’t do anything to help. He knew it would wreak havoc on their psyche, and yet he still made them stay. Made them suffer. Suffer for his sake and pleasure and ego.

All but one finger slips from the tether as he stops moving. His breathing becomes shallow, and no matter how he tries to remind himself that the shadows are manipulating him, burrowing into his mind, there’s another part of him that understands the truth of the situation.

“I know,” he whispers to no one but the hidden shadows eagerly watching on. He knows they’re there, knows they’re waiting for just such a moment of weakness. He shakes his head, trying to shake the thoughts back to their dark source. “I know, I know…”

The warmth of the strings fades into the chaotic arena, leaving him cold and alone. His hand drops to his side from the tether, and the minuscule bit of light it offers shrivels up and leaves him in the desolate black. On the one hand, Kozmotis is too aware that he’s playing right into the fearlings’ hands. On the other, the pain, the guilt, and the failure is still real.

He feels his former family before he hears them. They enter the realm behind him somewhere, calling out gently. The Kozmotis Pitchiner buried deep within his vague memories wants to be with them terribly. Their names are right at his lips but he cannot drag them out. Apologies for being away for so long all the time rush through his mind. He turns, searching for them, relying on the emotions of want and despair to guide him.

But they’re not behind him. He can’t see his hand in front of his face, but he knows they’ve disappeared.

“Kozmotis?”

“Daddy?”

He spins around again, nearly losing his footing as a dizziness catches his mind. There! He stumbles forward, armor and long robes springing up around him as the shadows compress into his form. He’s heavy. He can’t run too fast or risk falling.

 _How long have I been here?_ he thinks. Still mere minutes, he realizes. But one second is far too long when the shadows are playing to an agenda.

So much is happening in so little time. It’s been ages since he’s been back home. Their villa is practically an inn stop for him on his long journeys, adding and subtracting aspects from itself in a series of ever-changing moments that happen beyond him. He blinks his eyes and his daughter can walk, can speak, can sail on her own. He blinks again and his wife has a streak of gray in her hair, wrinkles around her eyes, yet another new style of clothing on.

“Kozmotis, honey!”

“Daddy!”

Their names are on the tip of his tongue. How does he forget the names of the two most important people in his life? This darkness is confusing him. He needs to find a light source. Something, anything to chase it away and find the correct path to his—

His toes trip against something solid. He hunches over, feeling out the path. Stairs. Stairs leading up. Up to—

The targets. The plan. Such a plan! This will show the good General. He thinks he can oppose the forces of darkness, turn the fearlings away from the darkness that makes them what they are, as if he has none residing within him.

The targets. The plan. To shuffle in, up these stairs while he’s away. One false report is all it takes because he takes every report with the good faith that it is true. Lies will undo themselves under scrutiny of character, but Kozmotis Pitchiner does not scrutinize, he just coddles and cajoles. Presents the options as if that can change anything. Where there is light, there is darkness created by the light. But darkness does not create light within it.

The targets are inside and so they sneak up these stairs, enter the household. A beautiful house, a beautiful life. But beauty is only a single scratch away from imperfection and ugliness. Up the stairs, into the house, destroy the house and everything its owners stand for. They—he—will kneel soon. Will bow.

Through the house, and the targets are already awake. The older one screams, runs, hides. Oh, she barricades the door to the small one’s room, begging her daughter to wake up and run. Barricades will not last under the strength of the shadows, though, especially not one so hastily crafted in panic.

Oh, the panic. Energizing and bitter. More.

Up the stairs, through the house, chase the wife, break the door down.

She has the child in her arms, wrapped in their blanket. Hugging her close. Afraid, but determined. A heady mix of resignation, defeat, of being cornered like a doe against the edge of a cliff as the wolves cut off her escape route. It’s too late.

And she disappears with a scream.

“No!”

Kozmotis screams as he collects back together into himself just in time for her to lean herself backwards out of the window, eyes closing, arms holding their daughter as tightly as possible. A single tear frees itself from her face as she drops, and it hovers for a moment in both the former reality of their lower-gravity world, and in the constructed memory the fearlings have just shared with him as he loses himself further in the darkness.

“No…”

Warmth covers his hand and shoots to the center of his chest, and a moment later a coiled, knotty tether bursts from just above his heart. Part of it shoots down into the dark, fraying as it spirals and curls and knots itself further. But one thread refuses to fray completely, a barely-there glimmer of silver in the dark. Another tether shoots out just beside it, weaving over and through the other one, fraying nearly identically. Again, all except for one single, thin, delicate, straining thread that darts off another way into the darkness.

Kozmotis slides to his knees and hovers his hands around the end of the tethers at his chest. The mess of tangles in front of him pulses every now and then, duller than the last connected thread looping themselves from him to, presumably, his wife and daughter. But still it glows, bright enough to see as he reaches out to the knots and touches it gently. Trying to untangle it would take a lifetime of patience, and he doesn’t have the time right now. Nor the energy, if the tremble encompassing his body is any indication.

“Just… Cut… It…”

It’s behind him. The Nightmare Man. Which means the spirit must be close by as well. Kozmotis doesn’t give it the satisfaction of flinching or turning to face it.

“What happens if I do so?” His voice stutters only once, due to his exhaustion rather than any fear.

“You free yourself from all worldly concerns.” It takes on his voice, just as it had back on Thera. “You lost last time only because—” It pokes one, long claw to his back, pressing until it pierces one of the scars on his back. “—that tether weighed you down. Even you understand on a deep, secret level how cumbersome it is.”

“I believe no such thing.”

“And yet, when given the chance to clean and re-weave the frayed edges, you didn’t. You remain broken, but captive. This new manifestation will tie you down until you cannot move again.”

"It's impossible to fix them."

"Oh? Impossible?" The shadows shift and a few tethers shimmer against the darkness. "If it's not impossible to create them, it stands to reason they can be fixed."

"And I suppose you know how to do that, hm? What exactly would it cost for me to agree to your help? The rest of my sanity? My lover?"

"One lover for another, if you're naming your price..." The darkness drifts in around him, closer and closer to the strings at his chest. "It would seem as if nothing had ever been lost."

Echoes of Rina’s and Collin’s voices resound through him. They’re calling for him, wanting to see him. A softer whisper sneaks in behind them, and he takes a second to identify it: Jordan. He looks at his hands and sees new strings around his fingers, reminding him of these people, and at least one reminding him of the promise he made. The tethers blink, and then fade as his tiredness grows more. But the reminders linger. He _will_ return to Thera. He _will_ reunite the spirit with their son.

He will _not_ tolerate this doppelganger dripping acid into his ear anymore.

He whirls around, reaching into the darkness. He grabs the hem of a piece of clothing, but it slips from his fingertips. He scrapes through the darkness, trying to find it and end it, fighting against the exhaustion and creeping memories. He flails and screams until his arms grow heavy, and his knees lock and fold.

“Show yourself,” he pants, reaching up again. “Come on!”

A hand strikes out in front of him, grabbing him at the throat and dragging him until the changing gravity pulls at his feet hard enough to do the most work of cutting off his air. The doppelganger emerges from the shadows, shooing them away from its diabolically grinning form. Kozmotis forces his arm up to return the favor, and the Nightmare Man grins wider and wider until the corners of its mouth are almost wrapping around its head to meet each other.

Kozmotis reaches for the silver tethers and a mess of them flare from his fingers, wrapping around the Nightmare Man’s neck and tightening. A shadow swoops over the threads, however, and diminishes them. Kozmotis reaches even further, drawing upon his centuries of magic use to summon as much as he can. The area lights up as dozens more threads shoot wildly into the darkness. The shadows are pushed farther and farther away as he pours his energy into them, directing them as best he can to arc towards the Nightmare Man, grab its wrists and ankles, force it to its knees, and pull its head up so that it’s watching Kozmotis above it.

“I get the distinct feeling I’ve done this before,” Kozmotis says. “Yes. Fearlings and dream pirates. Captive. But I’m far too incensed, too broken to consider any of them worth saving this time. They took from me; I will take from them. How apt.”

The strings tighten even more, cutting into the flesh at its neck. Still, the damned creature smiles, even has the gall to start a hitching, gagging laugh that makes the tight, ready strings shake, the glow fluttering around it. Like shining spider silk woven into a magnificent web.

And here is the fly caught in the trap.

He puts his all into willing the magic to smother and choke and slice through the Nightmare Man. He vaguely feels the sweat forming around his hairline, definitely feels the pounding in his head as he exerts so much energy. This power is not so different from his last, and he’s already settling into the groove of how to command it. Now if he can only. Crush. That disgusting. Grin. He pushes further than he’s ever pushed before, but just as the doppelganger’s eyes start to roll up in its sockets, the silver threads flicker.

They flicker again, some falling and fading completely. Kozmotis grunts and gives it one last push. The pain spikes across his head so violently he goes blind for a moment. The power pulses, and then the warm sensation disappears from both his fingertips and his heart. The laughing gets louder and less haggard as the threads all fade and slip, and suddenly nothing is holding this monster down. Kozmotis reaches. He reaches again. It’s too much, and he collapses to his knees, panting and desperately rubbing his eyes to summon his sight back.

Just as he does, the Nightmare Man conjures obscuring layers of darkness around them, letting it crawl all over their forms. The next thing he knows, there’s a pulling sensation, and the two are tumbling into the icy air.


	54. Heart of the Darkness

Utter and complete emptiness doesn’t get easier to wade through, no matter how many times you’ve been through it. Luckily, you’re not in the void for long before you’re tossed onto the hard surface of ice. You skid a yard or so, scrambling to grab a hold of anything that’ll slow you down. You latch on to a small jut of ice and jam your foot into a fissure running perpendicular to it, yanking you to a halt. Sighing, you gently get your feet beneath you, knees wobbly from the jolt of anxiety the trip through the portal leaves you with.

You can’t see the Pole from wherever you are. It’s an ice sheet, cracking and squealing away under your feet, the edge of a cliff about a hundred yards away. You can’t be too far from it, though; the strange storm that kicked up as the fight began is still off to your side, just dark enough to filter through the thick haze settling over the area. Small particles of ice scrape against the back of your throat as you pant and swallow, making you go into a small coughing fit that only agitates the feeling and makes it difficult to breathe.

“Hello?” you manage to call out, just in case. The groaning ice is your only immediate reply. You wrap your arms around yourself and hunker down, hoping Katherine will fly over, or a search party will come. They’ll have to be looking for you soon, you reason.

“You there.”

You stop breathing for a moment as the voice breaks through the silence. It can’t be. You misheard—

“You, on the ice.”

Cold. Commanding. Ethereal. That night… You shake your head a bit and shiver as your back starts to ache. You cough, wiping your mouth for the blood you remember leaking out that night, reach behind you to try and push invisible weight off your back so you can breathe properly.

“Answer me: what does Kozmotis mean to you?”

You turn your body until you’re facing a looming figure obscuring themself in the haze. They reach a hand out quickly, and a lightning bolt strikes the ice just near enough to make you worry. You place a hand to the ground and listen, trying to make sure the other creatures from that night aren’t waiting to spring. You rub your fingers on the bow in your other hand, the smooth, polished wood giving you something other than cold to ground yourself on.

“Do you care about him?!” the voice demands. You look them in what you assume is their face.

“You killed me that night.” That’s not what you’d been planning to say, but the whisper is the only thing that comes out. “You saw me and my son in danger and told us both to go to hell as the trees were torn up by invisible things.”

The figure goes silent, and then, just barely, you hear them muttering and gasping. You squint, trying to see exactly what or who they are, but the haze and snow are too stubborn. All you can see is when they tilt their head and look at where the moon usually is.

“A night just like this?” they say. “No, it can’t be. What would those odds be?” The figure gazes back at you. They clear their throat. “Many years ago, I came across two, well, fiends we’ll call them. In a temperate forest near the ocean. They were born from shadows, but not quite full darkness themselves. In fact, they looked much like your… animal. Hunched backs, terrifying claws and tusks, long and lithe and strong. I thought the Boogeyman had created or summoned them, and I was simply discarding such abominable life. I wonder at the coincidence, if you were one of the humans I encountered that night, that you should reappear less than a century later with a smaller version of the thing that killed you.

“But that still does not answer my question: how have you come to know the Boogeyman—former Boogeyman, allegedly—so, shall we say, intimately?”

“No, no,” you say. “No I’m the one who got literally _killed_ that night, I deserve answers first!”

“You haven’t lived quite long enough to demand Mother Nature to do anything!”

“Mother Nature, huh? Cool, well, I grew up getting battered by all your hurricanes. Gonna take a bit more than self-aggrandizing to make me afraid of you!”

The wind curls up slowly. At first, it’s a few miscellaneous dervishes here and there, one or two pats of snow slapping your ankles. And then just as suddenly, you’re scrambling on your knees, trying to dig your boots and fingers into any crevasse you can find to keep from being flung away like a dead tree branch in a storm.

“You will learn—”

A dome of shadow cuts them off, and the air starts to go stale as the gloom starts infecting the small arena. There’s a few muffled booms, and some outer layer of the dome lights up with the being’s attempts to crush it. You keep your weapon ready and start turning in a circle, positioning yourself as close to the center of the area as you can, scanning for any movement.

A creaking groan kicks up to your side, and a portal spits out two figures tumbling over each other.

Pitch. And Pitch. Both wearing the old, thin robes he’d had when you met. One kicks the other, and he slides several yards away to your left. For a moment, he doesn’t move, and then he moans and grunts as he pushes himself to his knees, rubbing his neck and chest. The other on your right pants and stumbles one or two steps forward. He wipes his forehead and rubs his hand on the robe.

At almost the exact same moment, as they feel the clothing under their fingers, both of them grab at the robes and examine themselves.

You, for your part, keep your arrow nocked, waiting to see how this plays out. They both look your direction at once and start talking.

“It’s being very clever, but I beg you, don’t let it fool you this way,” the one on your right says to you. He takes a step toward you before stopping as you twitch the bow in your hands, and as a hunk of snow catches him in the shoulder.

“Darling!” the other says as he finishes throwing the snow, struggling and failing to get to his feet. He concentrates on his hands for a moment. There is a spark of something, but if he’s trying to summon that new power, it fails him. He bends over until his head touches the snow, groaning. “I’m tapped out for now. Too new. I don’t know it enough to keep it going. Don’t let it near you…”

The one to your right also examines his hands, to similar strain. He then grabs a larger handful of snow, yanking a sizable, sharp bit of ice, too.

“I’ll show you ‘tapped out.’”

He starts stumbling his way over to the other.

“No!” you command. He stops instantly. The one to your left looks up at you as well. “Neither of you move.” You gesture for him to back up.

He hesitates for a moment, and then does so, glaring at the other across the way. Your mind races, trying to figure out what to do. It seems so simple in cartoons and shows—eventually one of them trips up somehow, right? Or true love or intuition or one of those things that fictional characters have stretched out moments to contemplate, but the longer you hesitate in choosing the more nervous you get and the more antsy the both of them become and you are quite aware that Pitch is hellbent on getting revenge on the Nightmare Man and will delay only so long.

“Darling…” The Pitch on his knees smiles up at you. “I trust you. Implicitly. So when I say that if you must shoot us both, you should absolutely heed it. Please. If it comes to that. I’d rather it didn’t.”

The one to your right hasn’t said anything else. He alternates between flexing his fingers and clenching his fists, dancing on the balls of his feet.

Finally, he says, “Arden.”

The Pitch on your left jerks their head to him and snarls, “How dare you have the nerve to speak that name!” He lifts himself off the ground, swaying. “How dare you rummage through their memories like that!”

“I could have sworn such tricks were part and parcel to being a shadow. Or have you conveniently forgotten?”

A bead of sweat drips down your face and catches between the lens and your eyelid. The salt makes the slight tug of the leather strap rub coarsely over your eye, and you shake your head to try and get rid of the sensation. And then it strikes you. You dig your heels in a little bit more.

“You!” you call out to the one on your right. “Ten seconds. Convince me you’re the real Kozmotis.”

He stammers and looks around as you count down in your head.

“Five seconds!” You try to widen your stance a little bit, to stabilize yourself. This is going to be hell on your head and shoulders when you make your move, but hopefully it spares enough of your sanity and clarity. That Pitch gapes like a fish as you say, “Time’s up! You!”

The one to your left takes a deep breath. “Darling, you’re the only thing I’ve cared about in this world in too long. I love you.” He licks his lips. “Just let me take out this impostor, and let’s be done with this whole mess.”

You turn back to the other one, flexing your fingers and making sure your muscles are loose enough for quick movement. “Rebuttal?”

“I’ve made my feelings clear to you multiple times. I long for the day they’re welcome in your heart, and for you to find the peace of mind to return them.”

You rip off the lens.

Shocked screams of “No!” come at you from two directions, but you ignore them in favor of keeping yourself upright. You close your regular eye, diminishing the immediate dizziness you knew was coming. Your knees shake. They threaten to buckle, but hold for now. Your grip on the bow is looser than you’re hoping, but the arrow is still there on the string. The itch returns, now more of a running sensation just under your skin that makes you shake and shiver as it curls and digs ever deeper the longer your eye is in use. Deep breaths, shoving away the urge to vomit. And you focus through the shadow eye.

Both of them are covered in shadows, a light layer disguising their clothing. To your right is the fluorescent winter gear. Even though the last question had been just a distraction, you were mostly sure who was who from his answer.

But now you see the Nightmare Man in its true form of dense, blotting shadows. The glamour of Pitch’s face and the robes are still there, but dimmer, transparent. Illusions on full display. It rears up as you raise your bow and aim at it.

“Come on,” you growl under your breath. Your knees shake harder. “A little closer.”

It swoops to you, covering way more distance than you had estimated. As it gets mere yards from you, the layers of dense shadows become easier to see between. And then you see the core of the monster, tucked within the densest folds and wisps, and the route straight to it. You take a deep breath, with your arrow locked on, and fire.

It strikes true, and the Nightmare Man freezes in place, too-long arm of too-long claws inches away from scraping your cheek. Your knees give up and send you crashing into the snow, retching.

As your wipe your mouth, you feel a hand grab you. You jerk away from the sudden contact that swoops into your blind spot. The initial panic subsides when you see Pitch, kneeling beside you, panting and desperately holding out the lens to you. You hesitate too long for him and he quickly, but carefully, wraps his fingers around your face and slides the lens back on as gracefully as he can. It snags your hair a bit, and you hiss.

“Sorry,” he whispers and he lifts you up and pulls you away from the twitching form of the Nightmare Man.

You lean on him for a second, hoping he’s stable enough to support you both for a second. He wraps his arms around you, kisses the top of your head, and whispers your name over and over. You come back to yourself a little bit more, enough to have you motivated to get moving. You trap his wrist in your hand and start pulling him to the edge of the ice sheet. The shadow dome evaporates around you.

“We gotta go,” you say, looking around. Maybe your murderer can lend a hand before they fuck off. The being isn’t there anymore, and you’re left looking down a steep drop. Neither Kidra nor Kailash here to lift you away. This is bad. “We really gotta go.”

“Darling we can wait a bit. You caught it right in its—” A shuffling sound interrupts him. The both of you glance back.

As you’d hoped, using the petal Bunny gave you granted magnificent results. Thorny vines rip out from the wound in its chest. The Nightmare Man is stunned no more, instead tossing and turning, ripping at the vines. It screams, and more vines and flowers curl out of its mouth like thin tongues, one of them reaching down and wrapping itself around its neck. A faint shimmer of gold marks the peak of each thorn, and where they rip and pierce, they leave widening borders of gold and green glitter.

It stumbles toward you both, claws still very much sharp and under its command. It screams again, and a rank shower of petals shoots from between its jagged teeth. Pitch moves in front of you.

“Don’t be stupid! I have the arrows!”

“Well I—”

“Are _not_ expendable especially not when we’ve just gotten here!” You sound hysterical, but you figure it’s a worthy cause to get hysterical for.

The vines keep spreading, and you keep thinking it must die soon. The Nightmare Man leans over to one of the vines, concentrates, and then covers itself with a burst of shadows. One of its eyes folds and collapses, and then blossoms into a dark purple flower. The vines tremble, still choking and piercing it, but a few thinner ones flutter and then reach to you two instead of the creature. It dashes to you.

You shove him aside, quickly load and fire an arrow, shove everything back inside your quiver and latch yourself onto Pitch’s chest. You hear the explosion behind you, a glint of gold catching your peripheral. You can’t brace against the shockwave, and it sends you both over the edge Then there’s a scream, a squeal, a pitiful cry, and then nothing but the faintest hiss.

You wrap your arms around him, and he returns the gesture by tilting your face to his. He’s on edge, but smiling.

“And what the hell were you just saying about dying?” He drags you closer to him.

“I’m good at panicking, you know.” You laugh a bit, purposefully not looking past him to the approaching ice. “Hey, Koz?”

He nods, waiting for the next thing you say. You crash your faces together, dragging each other as close as you can while fighting the wind trying to make you tumble uncontrollably. He bites at and pulls your lower lip. You bury your hands in his hair, wrap your legs around him, trying to stay as close to him before you hit the ground. You lose yourselves in the air, drawing moans and chuckles and sighs out of each other as you plummet toward the ground, blissful as you can be.


	55. Ghost of the Father

It’s only a matter of time, probably seconds, before they hit the ground, but Kozmotis hasn’t felt this frivolous in so long. Not even their day together just over a fortnight ago. Not since probably their first time together or before that when they shyly stuck to making out against trees all night. They both have no more time for this, except all the rest of the time the world gives them before the final impact. He tangles himself in them until he’s not quite sure where he ends and they begin and vice versa.

A sudden gale knocks their heads together. He snaps on their tongue a bit too hard and the spirit flinches, their forehead smashing right into his nose. They mumble apologies to each other, and then glance around as best they can while being thrown sideways. Then around in a whirl.

But they’re not plummeting anymore, so that’s a step in a good direction.

They swirl lower and lower, but no less violently. Finally, ten feet above the ice, the wind gives out, letting them fall the rest of the way. Kozmotis grabs the spirit to him and turns to take the brunt of the impact. He can’t breathe for a solid thirty seconds after the hit, only in part because the spirit accidentally crushes his gut with the momentum. They shake themself loose, sliding off his stomach and straddling his hips. He takes a cough of the gloriously frozen air, never happier for it to sting as his lungs expand and contract in a proper rhythm again.

“Some ride,” the spirit mumbles, leaning back over him and attaching their lip to his neck.

He clutches their hips and stutters at the touch. They laugh and give him a quick bite for good measure, and he’s digging his hands into them. He grabs their wrist and brings it to his own lips for a kiss, and then leaves a mark there. He carefully wraps his hand around the back of their neck, hesitating a moment to make sure they’re all right, and when the spirit groans he presses them to him. The seconds or minutes or hours fly by as they sit in freezing snow, running their hands over each other and listening to each other’s hitching breaths.

“Ahem.”

They both flinch at the sharp sound. The spirit instantly flushes, and he can’t help but laugh at how warm they get so quickly. He squeezes their hand as they sheepishly raise their gaze to whoever is nearby. And then they pause, a curious and conflicted expression crossing their face. Kozmotis sits up and turns.

This can’t be right. This can’t… _it can’t._

Sanderson is there, speaking to the entity. He divides his attention between them, Kozmotis, and the spirit. And the entity…

They’re no longer shrouded in a mystifying haze. They look roughly like how he thought they’d look once they stopped obscuring themself. But he’s far from prepared when he recognizes them.

Dark hair, flowing magnificently in a wind that seems to surround her immediate person. Tall, grand, sure of herself, judging by the not-quite rigid but not-quite soft posture. A familiar face. From what he can barely hear of her voice: strong, grounding. Relatively gentle as she chats with Sanderson. Still so familiar as to break through the shadows lingering in his mind and make him cry out in shock and awe.

His wife. This being looks exactly like his wife.

Komotis flips himself over, making the spirit grunt in shock as they lift themself off of him. The spirit… He looks from them to her, though the spirit is doing much the same, mouth slightly agape as they hug their own elbows and chew on their lip.

He takes a few tentative steps toward her and Sanderson, who waves cheerfully enough, even though Kozmotis can see he’s slightly distracted. The entity clams up and shifts where she stands on the ice as he takes a few more steps closer. He reaches for her then thinks better of it and grasps the hem of his coat with his hands like an embarrassed child as he approaches. There’s a sound of shuffling behind him, and the spirit catches up, walking beside him with the same odd look on their face as when they first saw the entity.

 _Have they guessed? Do they know? Suspect?_ He suddenly feels queasy and one of his knees gives out, a result of so much stress. Or because of how much energy he’s expended already. As curious as he is about those strings, that’s at least six hours of rest away before he can explore it.

“C’mon,” the spirit whispers, lifting him up by the shoulder.

They move to wrap his arm around their shoulder, but he pulls away. He keeps walking, even as they pause for a moment. A few yards out, he stops, looks back, and as they reach him again, he holds out his hand.

“Sorry…” he mutters. “She… I’m a bit distracted.” They hesitantly take it, lacing their fingers through his and squeezing as hard as they can.

As they said earlier, they need to talk about all this when everything is finally settled. Especially with what’s about to be said next, because even he doesn’t know what he’s going to do with the sudden appearance of this ghost.

She shrinks in size—from a towering, twelve-foot titan to barely taller than himself. She tries to look everywhere but at him, but cannot help herself. And he can’t tear his eyes away from her. He does not know her name, does not remember a single thing about her except that he loved her so long ago. That nostalgia-laced desire makes his breath short and sweat drip down his face as the nausea gets worse. A thousand, no, a million questions burst and fizzle and pop across his brain, but the loudest one by far is, “How?”

He stops barely a yard from her, forces himself not to let go of the spirit’s hand, and looks her directly in the eye. She gazes back—cold, distant, hurt.

“I-I-I…” he takes a deep breath. The spirit squeezes his hand and leans against his shoulder. “I know you.”

She gives a sharp inhale and shakes her head.

“Do you, now?” she replies, almost choking to get the words out.

“Kind of,” he admits. “I have maybe only one complete memory of the Golden Age, but from that one moment in time, you resonate. You look so familiar.”

“Say my name,” she growls. A rumble of far-off thunder echoes the threat. But he shakes his head.

“I don’t have that memory,” he says. “Just the images. Your face.” He smiles, but even as he does so, tears creep out of the corners of his eyes and his face tries to warp itself into a frown. “No names. For you or her. Just the idea, the emotion, that I should feel loss at the absence. That I should remember how much I loved you both. But everything else is muddled. Sensations. Hollow memories of feelings.”

She closes her eyes. Her fists clench at her sides. Kozmotis flinches. The spirit wraps themself around his arm.

 _They don’t know,_ he realizes. He gulps. _They don’t even suspect._

“That’s the girl from your locket, right?” they whisper to him. “But older? Grown up?”

He stops. He looks again at the woman before him. There’s no streak of gray in her hair. No laugh lines or crows feet even hinting around her eyes. She’s too young. His heart drops into his roiling stomach and fresh grief ricochets up from the landing point. No. Not his wife; she is still dead and gone and completely absent.

She notices as he hesitates, her furious glare softening a bit. Her eyes betray the hope that sneaks into them. An identical glimmer from that memory, when he had been asked if he was staying a while that time, if he could go out sailing the next day.

“But my face does still mean something to you, does it?” she says. “Father?”

He collapses. The spirit is on their knees next to him in a second, whispering incoherently but gently, their own breath catching as they talk. He shakes his head, unable to process this. His daughter. Alive. And a magical spirit.

“Father?”

“What’s your name?” He sits back on his heels and looks up at her. “Please. I just want to—”

“No.” She starts rising back into the air, the wind and mist creating a small cloud around her legs and feet. “If you couldn’t be bothered to hold on to that, despite everything, then you don’t deserve to know.” She turns.

“It’s just a name! You’re his daughter!” the spirit yells next to him. “You called yourself ‘Mother Nature’ earlier when you were yelling at me, but what’s your real name?”

Mounds of snow jut up under the spirit and try to launch them, but Kozmotis manages to get a grip around them. They tumble to their sides.

“What are you doing?” he yells. She only ascends higher and higher. He cups his hands over his mouth. “How did you survive? How did you come to this planet?”

She flings her arms behind her as she skips higher into the sky, and the fog rolls in so violently that Kozmotis, the spirit, and Sanderson are tossed against the ground again. A few minutes later, the sky clears, leaving Selene as the only thing witnessing the scene below her.

*************

You cling to him as Sandy leads you back to the Pole. You barely speak to each other, the only thing of note he says is affirming to Sandy that, yes he’s taken to calling himself Kozmotis now.

“Just Kozmotis,” he says, after Sandy tries to say his former full name. He takes a deep breath. “Sanderson?” The Sandman flinches as he hovers, but turns in the air to face him. “Did I not ask you awhile ago if you knew what became of the general’s family? You seemed particularly chummy with… With my daughter.”

He nearly floats to the ground, but keeps himself in the air as he answers.

“Yes, you did. But I made a promise to her a long time ago, not too long before we both made it to the planet.” He bites his lip and then continues, haltingly, “She was a shooting star for a bit. I don’t know the exact circumstances that led her to becoming one, but I was the one who managed to wrangle and calm her as she sped through space. We crossed paths with your fleet at one point.” You hold Koz back as he twitches and tries to lunge. “You were so far gone that I had no choice but to run. It wasn’t until we’d escaped that she told me who you were to each other.”

“Why didn’t she say something while I was accosting you?”

“Probably for the same reason I wanted to get as far away as possible. I thought you’d turned evil.”

Koz twitches again, but doesn’t try to grab him again. He leans against you, holding your hand close. “I suppose you weren’t wrong.”

 _How am I even going to begin to tell him that his daughter killed me?_ You keep his arm wrapped around your shoulder, trudging through the calf-high snow. _Does it even really matter at this point? If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here right now, and if the invisible beasts had done the job by themselves—_ You push back against the horror of realizing what she'd said, that Kidra looks exactly like the fiends that night. _Selene still probably would have made me her pet project regardless._

Her attitude, though… As if she had done no wrong. She sent a whole spike through you—Several! In front of your _son._ Even though Koz is clearly in distress about this whole thing, to the point of trying to grab Sandy out of the air, you can’t help but fume. And can’t help but wonder if what she did saved you.

On the one hand, you had been ready to defend your job for their involvement in a massacre if you’d survived. On the other hand, you hadn’t lived long enough to do that, and now you’re trying to make up for your own, personal faults in the whole debacle. Twelve therapists over fifteen years hadn’t made better progress than the former boogeyman and holiday characters had in just over one.

_How do I reconcile my killer with the daughter my partner wants to remember?_

You suppose you ought to be supportive that he now, apparently, wants to remember his family. But the rage of her being unrepentant about your death at her own hands burns you at so bright a temperature you just want to sock her in her face.

Koz sighs beside you as Sandy finishes his story. Something about knowing her before she became Mother Nature, before they came to this planet, who she was… You don’t care. Except for the fact that you care that Koz cares. Deeply. He’s basically relying on you to support him all the way across the ice to the Pole. You opt to stay silent on the matter for now.

Just as the main workshop blinks into your sight, you hear someone calling your name. Right after, you see Kailash darting across the land.

“Katherine!” you yell. You stop where you are and wave. “We’re right here!”

She passes over, and then circles back around. Last you remember, Bunny was with her, but he’s not in the saddle anymore. She sets her goose down and everyone piles on.

The Pole is in a state of chaos when you finally get back to it. So chaotic that North takes only one moment to glance between you and Koz, gets the confirmation from Sandy that he’s the real one, and simply orders a yeti to guard the two of you as he and Sandy rush off together.

The adrenaline finally wears off, and you slump against each other. Koz absently plays with your hair, though every time you look at him, he’s gazing off into the distance, glassy-eyed. He doesn’t even react when a yeti comes around and starts inspecting you both for injuries. He mumbles something and waves them away. They humph, say something to your yeti guard to which he replies with a small laugh, and then they storm off. Occasionally, North or Sandy wander by, either dictating, pacing, or talking into the communicator. At some point, North appears and indicates you to follow him. You stand, only for Koz to suddenly grip your arm close, eyes completely focused on you.

“It’s just for a second,” you say, holding his other hand in both of yours.

He relaxes his grip a bit, but still refuses to let go. North sighs and motions for him to come, too. He leads you over to the globe.

“Please touch for moment. We need to see spires on here.”

“Hm?” Koz is suspicious as you reach out and plaster your hand to the orb. Instantly, all of the lights blink out except for the few on the southeast coast. The yetis and North rove around the other ways, talking among themselves. Koz starts to slide away, and then he pauses.

“That,” he whispers, pointing to the blinking light up the coast. “Is that Burgess?”

“Me and Katherine thought it might be. There’s a few more lights: India, Thera, Antarctica, and Australia.”

“Where the spires are?”

“Yeah.”

He gazes at the Burgess light until North peeks around again.

“—have not changed in frequency on globe. What is status over by Palace?”

Tooth’s voice crackles back over the device. “No change here. It’s still humming a bit, and if you get about three hundred yards out, you can really feel the atmosphere change.”

“And Palace?”

“Jack is there to protect it if the shadows try anything. Pretty much all the…" she sighs, "relevant… teeth are evacuated, though. So it would just be a defensive thing if they’re still on track for the new moon.”

“Heard and understood. Thanks, Tooth.” North tinkers with the device and then says, “Situation at Warren?”

“I’m barricadin’ myself with the Source and the amplified sand,” Bunny replies. “Katherine showed up not to long ago, says the spire is just sittin’ there. Shadows all ‘round it of course, but not a whole lot of ‘em.”

Finally, he hangs up and rubs his eyes. You open your mouth to speak, but Kozmotis beats you to it.

“That light.” He points. North nods. “That’s Burgess.”

“Katherine said she had speculated it was. But I am unable to figure why it glows like belief, same as other spires.”

You lift your hand away, flexing it a few times before wrapping your arm around Koz’s.

“Two months ago,” he continues, still staring at the spot. “When you were hunting me down because you thought I’d kidnapped Alisah… The reason I was in Burgess at the time was because the light had flared up on my end. The Nightmare Men went with me to inspect the town to see where the belief was and how it’d recovered so fast.”

“We had received new readings about weakening fear then, not breakthrough,” North replies. “Even now, we are seeing no lights there except for…” He indicates to you.

 _It read as belief to them then. It reads as belief now,_ you think. Placing your hand back on the globe, you ask, “But is it actually belief shining through them?”

“What do you mean?” Koz says.

You say nothing for a second and then, on a whim, drag his hand and place it beside yours. The light on Thera stays steady. You take his hand away, and it flickers again. He places his hand on there, and you take yours away, trying not to get jealous when there’s a whole smattering of lights over Europe and North Africa. All of them stay steady, though.

“You have been busy last two weeks, apparently,” North says crossing his arms and looming over Koz. “Good busy or bad busy?”

“I made a friend on the island, she decided to tell the world about me, and then a lot of others took to her story,” he replies. “That’s it.”

“The point,” you say, cutting them off before they go through that conversation. Your heart is starting to beat a little faster with the excitement that always comes on the verge of solving a mystery. “My point is that—however you measure belief with these lights—the areas with the spires resonate with a similar enough whatever-it-is that your globe picks it up, but it may not be actual, real belief.”

“Then what is it?”

“Dunno yet.” You rub your hands together, darting your eyes over all the different lights. They do twinkle a bit, but nothing as pronounced as the flickering spires. “But if you can get me a sample of one of them, I might be able to figure it out.”


	56. Words, Words, Words

Something falls off the shelf as you’re slamming back into the wall. It clatters to the ground, and you pay attention to it long enough to check that it neither shatters nor busts through the floor. Once you register it as benign, you go back to concentrating on the teeth tearing at your neck and the hands crawling their way under your shirt, scratching along your sides and back.

“Sorry,” Kozmotis whispers quickly, also not bothering to look up at what just fell. The cold iron of his manacles makes you hiss when they touch the bare, warming skin on your back.

The Guardians had insisted he wear them again, just as a precaution.

“And because agreement is technically still in place,” North said loudly over the both of you protesting. He clasped the manacles shut and held out the collar to you to put on Koz. “In exchange, you two can roam around grounds of Pole unsupervised. Well, except for tracking crystal, I guess. But!” He held out his hand to silence you. “You are still obligated to help with current crisis. Agreed?”

The current crisis is agonizing silence on the part of the fearlings. The peak new moon has come and gone, and both the Palace and Warren are untouched. It’s more unnerving to hear nothing now after the shadows had been shambling around you for so long. It’s been a few, tense days filled with complete peace in the outside world, and your first impulse is to finally, after so long, give in to relaxation.

Kozmotis licks his way up your neck and softly kisses you. He lingers there against you, and you open your eyes to see him watching you. Once he catches you, he smiles against your lips, and pulls back just so. He leans one of his arms against the wall, holds your face in his other hand and looms over you until you’re completely pressing against the wall in an effort to make some sort of space. You try to hide your smile.

“Hmm,” he says, raking his eyes up and down your body. He traces his finger across your jaw, down your neck, and lightly over your collarbone. “So, what do we have here?”

“Just a completely innocent spirit wondering why you’ve gotten so close to me.” You lean into your accent, trying to play up the wistfulness without dipping into the harsher twang too much.

He snorts and leans his head into the crook of his elbow, shaking with laughter. You just sigh and watch him for a few seconds before pushing yourself off the wall and past him.

“Darling! Come on.” He loops his arms around your waist before you get too far. You pull against him, slowly trying to make your way to the other side of the room. He digs his heels in. “Really, now!”

You swallow your own laughter. You reach one arm out, just to try and slip away, and then summon some of your magic to your other hand where you’re resting it on his. You feel a warmth start to pull towards it as he leans forward and growls, “Really, now...”

*************

About two days after the battle, Kozmotis had finally regained enough strength to play around with his new powers. The Guardians had interrogated him about the circumstances he attained them under the guise of supervising and observing. It was bad enough they forced him back into those cuffs, but all of them watching as he struggled with the multitude of strings was just humiliating. Eventually, it had become easier, and if he concentrated on a single thread long enough, he could hear the voice of the person linking to it whispering through. It still took a bit of effort to hear, however.

“Of all the spirits to go viral,” Jack said.

He’d procured a phone at some point and giggled as he scrolled through it, occasionally turning it to show to the fairy or Sanderson. Both of them just nodded with bemused smiles at every single picture he laughed at. Only the spirit seemed to understand, on some sort of generational or instinctual level, the amusement behind “memes.” Jack had shown one to him—some sort of botched four panel comic of him arresting a creepy bear. Utter nonsense.

But his spirit hadn’t been able to speak for five whole minutes after seeing it. They came just short of crying with laughter, desperately trying to explain all of the layered jokes one single picture apparently contained. He still didn’t understand after their long-winded, twisting, and further confusing explanation, but he was just glad they were smiling and laughing at all after everything they’d gone through over the last few months.

Now, in their room, as the spirit tries to wrench themself out of his grasp, he sees them summoning their power over his hands at their waist. It trickles over his fingers, the iridescence calling out to his own power.

“Really now…”

He grins and calls forth some of the silvery strings, a warmth darting over his hands pressing at their sides. Their power pulses back and forth like waves on a beach, and he sends a few of the threads to dip into it, just to grab a little bit and see what happens from there. They slide in easily, twisting and turning through their fingers and snaking slowly down to their thighs. Suddenly, there’s a tug on the strings.

In a moment, the spirit untwists themself from his arms and grabs hold of the threads. The crackling energy starts swirling around them, and he tries to push into it, to get control over it.

They kiss him.

He startles and leans into them, and not a second later finds himself tied up in their arms, the threads now binding his wrists together resonating with a tinge of iridescence. They release their power. In his confusion, the spirit had slipped from his grasp and ended up kneeling on their bed. They hook one finger into his bindings and pull him down with them.

He’s kneeling with his legs spread over their lap, hands held in place together like he’s begging. He can. Maybe they’ll finally get a move on from all this push and pull if he does. The spirit throws his arms over their shoulders and pulls them both down to the bed so that he has to hold himself up on his elbows just over them.

“Gotcha,” they say, running their hands over his chest.

*************

There’s still Easter to consider.

Your life moves in increments of two weeks at a time—too long to take chances, too short to get comfortable. It was the same back when you were hanging out with Kozmotis in your forest: two weeks of darkness kept him with you, two weeks of light kept him away. It’s been rare over the last year, you realize, that you’ve ever really had to look forward to a constant month or two. You miss boredom and monotony.

Not to the same extent as when you’d grown numb to both sensations, ignoring it for decades, but a bit of stability would be nice. After all, it’s a new beginning for you. No, no… You had your beginning, and to some extent wasted your potential. At your mortal end, you considered that a new beginning, but all it turned out to be was a gross plateau.

Koz shifts and starts sneaking his knee between your legs, his arms shaking as he continues to hold himself above you. You take one hand and rake it through this hair. He tries to lean in, but you hold him back. He jerks against you and swallows.

“Is that where we’re going today?” he whispers.

His tongue licks against his front teeth. You’re curious, and you tug back a little more. He shivers, hands and arms twitching enough to move to where they catch the back of your head.

You freeze. He starts to move quickly, trying to haul himself off you, whispering, “Sorry, sorry…” After the initial rush of tension in your body, however, you slam your head back down on his hands.

“Darling?” he says, trying to flatten his hands, and spread his fingers out so that he touches a little as possible. You gaze him in the eye. He tries to move away again, and you press back harder. He nods. “Let me know when it becomes too much.”

He curls his fingers into your hair, watching your expressions. He eases his fingers around so that they massage your head, occasionally giving a minor tug. You take to breathing deeply in, slowly out to counteract your heart rate increasing. As you watch his face, you realize you're caught between him and the bed. Rock, hard place.

_No. That's not true. I'm safe, and Kozmotis will not hurt me._

He brushes a kiss against your cheek, and another quick one to your lips before he leans down and starts a licking and sucking your neck. It’s tender enough that there are no surprises. And then he dives in a little rougher, trying to suppress a moan as he bites hard enough to leave a mark. His knee slides up a bit more.

You lean into the sensations. Between the soft massage through your hair and the sharpness cutting across to the other side of your neck, just avoiding the edge of the mark, you find it easier to lose yourself to the pleasure than to the fear. Thirty seconds go by. A minute. But at the minute and a half mark, he licks a bit too close to the mark, and the nausea hits you hard.

“Locket.”

He lifts himself away, carefully laying your head onto the mattress as he rolls to an empty part. He concentrates for a second, and then a flash of silver overwhelms the threads at his wrist. He gathers control of them, and dismisses them. As he stretches his arms and rolls out his joints a bit, he watches you as you sit up and rub your face.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just need a sec.”

Once you’ve got yourself back under control, you lean over to him and pull his face to yours. Then you settle next to him, laying your head in his lap to rest for a bit. You have time now. Not as much as you’d like in the short term, but this war can’t last forever, giving up only for a few brief moments between battles. Kozmotis takes a lock of your hair and twists it between his fingers, sighing and looking out past the window. You peek at it, too.

“It’s snowing,” you say.

“It does tend to do that around here, doesn’t it?”

“I’d never seen it until they brought me here.”

“Really? Your company never sent you to snowy places on a business trip?”

“No. Well, I got sent to a few conferences in New York and Canada, but it didn’t snow while I was there.”

“Well, we’re heading to Antarctica soon. So there’ll be a bit more to see.”

“Actually—”

*************

He senses that spark in their eye before they’re turning around and facing him. That gleam that indicates they’re suddenly aching to relay a bunch of information at once. How the spirit managed to stay isolated for so long without crumbling into insanity with no one to talk to—

Actually, as he and others have found, it’s easier than one might think. The trick is to pretend nothing is wrong for so long that you believe it. To talk to yourself so often that you start to get the same thrill as a real conversation. To stand next to nonchalant, chattering humans every so often so that the lack of a different voice doesn’t stand out during the times when there’s only one saying everything.

So hearing his spirit burst forth with how Antarctica is a desert and that for a long time they wanted to do research there is more than just alleviating to his worry about their mental state. It reminds him how present he actually is. How real.

But it can’t quite distract him from the lingering thoughts about his daughter.

“What is her name?” He’d cornered Sanderson not too long after the battle; he hadn’t been forced back into the cuffs just yet. The Sandman avoided looking at him directly.

“I made a promise to her that I wouldn’t—”

“That was who knows how long ago!” He had punched a nearby beam. A mistake, but the sore finger had healed over by the next day. “What is her name, and where does she live?”

He just shook his head and blasted off into the air, leaving a warning flurry of dreamsand in his wake.

Kozmotis doesn’t mean to tune out the spirit’s Antarctica spiel. The curtain of snow hypnotizes him as he leans his head over the spirit’s shoulder when they reach out to him, sliding into his lap. There’s a haze creating a rime of frost at the wooden crossing panels. What cold leaks in past the glass becomes a mirage-like shimmer as it meets the well-heated interior of the bedroom.

If he continues to stare, he swears he can see her watching from afar, form flashing in between the snowflakes.

“You’re being quiet today.”

He focuses again, leaning back to see his spirit watching him, head cocking to one side.

“I was just…” He decides not to lie. “Thinking about my daughter.”

They take a deep breath and shift to a different position. One that brings them closer together in very noticeable areas. He grasps them around their waist.

“You actually consider her your daughter?” They stutter for a second, before rephrasing, “Even though you don’t really remember most of your life, you still think of yourself as her dad?”

“I suppose it’s a moot point of whether I was her biological father, an adoptive one, or merely a tutor at this point.” He takes their hand and kisses each fingertip. “But I can to some extent remember her, remember being proud of her whenever she accomplished something new, remember…”

They slip their hand out of his tightening grip and wipe his cheek. He’s crying. God, what has happened to him, he’s _crying._ Pitch Black would never—

Because Pitch Black _could_ never.

Kozmotis pities Pitch Black in that moment. A being of spite and loneliness, unable to admit that he caused his own downfall. Yet, he mourns Pitch Black. A being of survival and perseverance, who could always drag himself back up from failure by himself, no matter how long it took.

The spirit cups his face in their hands and presses a long, slow kiss to him. He opens for them, and they capture his tongue, sucking on it so hard that he stirs and really pays attention. He pulls the spirit against his hips and they continue the motion without much prompting. He trails his fingers under their shirt again, feeling the slightly raised welts where he’d been clawing at them earlier.

“Trust me, I know about missing time with kids,” the spirit whispers. “And despite her attitude toward you, if you need help finding her so you can talk and work something out. Let me know.”

He kisses them in reply, and then suddenly remembers something. He pulls back, they pause, and then try to ask what’s wrong as he pats himself all over. His new clothing doesn’t have nearly as many pockets as his winter wear, but he knows he put it in of these things. He’s just kept forgetting in between all the excitement until now…

“Ah!” He finds it, and then pulls out the keychain. His spirit takes a look at it as he places it in their hand, curious, and then they laugh and light up.

“Where did you find this? One of the gift shops you ran through on your way back north?”

“Kind of.” He locks eyes with their sparkling gaze. “As luck would have it, I ran into Jordan.” He cuts them off as they open their mouth, shoving the address into their hand, too. “He and Alisah are all right. And he very much wants to see you.”

They get up, gently set the items down on the bedside stand, and then clamber over him again, crashing into him so hard that he’s worried their teeth are going to break against his. Their nails rake against his back as they grind back and forth against him, his member finally hardening in force after so many false starts. He gasps and returns as much as they give.

*************

No more talking. No more talking, not after all that. You have only so much time and it feels like the looming hourglass is about to run out of sand yet again and force you apart. This is almost too much to parse at once: his daughter, your son, the spires, the silence, the shadows. There’s been a layer hovering over your heads that you can only now see in exact detail how muddy it truly is, and you just want—just need—to feel your way through it.

Some talking. Some talking can happen first.

“Hey, Kozmotis?” you eke out.

“Yes, darling?”

You hold yourself on your knees above him, carefully holding his face and wandering your eyes over every twitch of his eyes, every pant that that makes his face contort in wanton need.

Nevermind. You were right the first time. No more talking.

You start just under his ear, licking and sucking a trail down his neck, over to his scar where you bite down and layer another mark on top. He grunts and hisses, one hand digging into your hips as much as he possibly can, the other reaching under your waistband to hold your ass and grind you even closer to him. You continue making your way down from his shoulder, shifting to reach his chest, pushing him down onto the bed so you can reach better.

He resists, trying to say something, but you dart up to his lips and swallow whatever he tries to say until there’s nothing left but sharp, begging moans escaping as you break to breathe. Finally, he’s left holding on and grabbing you more fiercely, allowing you to go back to the business at hand.

You can feel his cock with every back and forth he guides you through, and he’s just starting to push himself up to meet you when you pause. He violently relaxes his tightly-would body, panting both to catch his breath and control himself as he glares at you. You smile, get off the bed again, and languidly slide your shirt over your head.

As the fabric blocks your vision for a second, you feel warm tickling sensations start to curl around your waist. A few travel up to your breasts and sit there. The rest dart down to your thighs and tighten around your stomach, pulling gently. You get the shirt off and toss it into the farthest corner of the room.

Kozmotis sits up on the bed, back against the headboard. One hand is around the stream of threads circling around you, weaving their ways up and down your body. His other rubs against himself, twitching as he only allows himself a steady rhythm to keep up the contact that was there not a minute ago. He nods to your still-covered lower half.

“Off.”

The threads constrict for a moment. He winks. Then they loosen and allow you to reach down and hook your thumbs through the waistband. You start to move them down, and he squeezes himself, face scrunching as he tries to resist letting out a long moan. You finish shucking off the pants, and he tugs, doing away with his own pants as you climb over the bed to him.

The threads continue to wind their ways over you hugging close. You can feel the tenderness emanating from them, warming your skin as you get closer and closer to Koz. He leans up as you situate yourself over his hips again, starting to grind into him again, the pulsing threads helping to guide you alongside his hand back on your rear. He whispers your name. You increase the pace.

He licks a line across your collarbone, pulling you close enough to get a hold of your back and digs his teeth into the top of your left breast. You start to reach out to cradle his head, but the threads fight. They hold you back just inches away from coming into contact with him. He drifts down until his lips are barely nibbling your nipple, and he looks up at you.

Those eyes. Those eyes will haunt you for eternity, no matter what happens. Like the edges of a solar flare. The riskiest part of a solar eclipse to view with your naked eyes. A semblance of familiarity and an immediate danger lurking within them. But in truth, they are the windows to a mirror, one you have seen shatter and piece itself back together. Kozmotis loses himself in you as much as you in him, and he has to close those eyes and lean his forehead against your torso for a moment.

“You have wrecked my life. Thrust it into an opposite direction. Upended all my plans,” he says. He lays a kiss to your chest and yanks the strings. You could be closer to him only if you started to meld into his flesh directly. “Thank you.”

You lift yourself as much as you can, arching yourself into his face. “Of course… Your majesty.”

He laughs. He holds you close and positions himself, and then lowers you down. So slowly, letting his girth stretch and completely fill you. Your breath hitches as the familiar feeling meshes and folds with the threads. It all becomes him, and you have never felt safer than in his grasp.

“Kozmotis?” you say again. He manages to focus on you and you glance from his desperate, ready gaze to the address and keychain sitting side by side. You hate that he met your son before you did, but the gesture makes it more than worth the rush.

“Yes, darling?”

His body shivers, making him thrust shallowly into you. You gasp. He groans. You slide against him once. Twice. The drag and push of him inside you is all at once too much and not nearly enough. You need more. There hasn’t been enough, and you think you might burst from need. The words you’re trying to say slip out of your sphere of capability as you angle into him. Your gasp turns into a moan as you curl over him, your arms dragging up his back as his groan turns into a shuddering gasp.

*************

“What is it?” he asks, trying to contain himself. They’re together. They’re connected like he’s craved for weeks. They have his attention, but just barely as it’s getting harder and harder to concentrate. “Darling, whatever it is, can it wait? Please just… Let me…”

They scratch along his back. The welts raise almost instantly as enough of the pain lingers to make him the least bit more lucid. He peeks through his eyelids. The silvery threads wrap around them in exquisite patterns, shining against their arms and legs. And then they’re pulling themself up and down in agonizing motions that catapult him into the nearest oblivion.

He meets their motions thrust for thrust, dragging his tongue over every inch of them that he can reach in the awkward position he’s settled in. Their taste as they begin to sweat from the exertion. Their cries as the minute twitches change the angle of his cock burying into them over and over again. Sex has been considered a sacred rite among many civilizations throughout time and space, but it is only now that he understands how the basest means afforded sentient life can achieve apotheosis.

He. They. Twining together in a ridiculous mess of pleasure and passion and potential.

Kozmotis dives back to them catching their nipple in his mouth as the spirit bobs on top of him. The tangible taste of flesh—hardening into a peak under the heat of his mouth—grounds him in a way that the soft sheets can’t. He thinks he hears a familiar hum echoing from the celestial sphere into the room, and if the primordial Selene wants to become their voyeur, may she be granted the best of luck and timing to catch them like this again.

The threads nearly give out as the spirit clenches around him and he has to release them from his mouth for a second to gasp and open his eyes and return to reality before the unreality overwhelms him. They’re panting, barely focusing on him as they push themself to and fro. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh is intoxicating with how primal it sounds. A reminder that, beyond the immortality they have to grapple with, there is always the realm of the most basic of sensations, wants, needs.

How did he survive this long without them here, entangling with the him and the silver? Denial, of course. But how dare that keep him away from anything like this. How dare Pitch Black deny himself over the centuries. How dare Kozmotis Pitchiner keep himself away from his wife like that.

Kozmotis holds the spirit close and flips them over. There’s a sudden stillness as he does so. The spirit glances around in confusion as their vision converts from looking down at him to understanding he has taken control yet again. As excitable as he can be at the prospect of losing all capacity for dominance, he is equally as determined to keep it, especially if his spirit thrives in pleasing their partner. They mesh: diabolical mirrors of each other, and yet the erotic ideal. But as he affixes his gazes down at them—so desperate, so ready—he can’t help but wonder at how far they must yet go.

A new war. The mark on their neck. Their children.

That last thought he shoves out immediately as he snaps his hips against theirs. He is every bit as exposed as they are. Delicate. Steadfast. Malleable. If Selene’s odd want to look in peeks just at the edge of his notice, Kidra’s scratching at the door is a blip on the radar.

Forget the outside. Now. Here. This is what exists at the moment.

“Koz!”

He thrusts harder and harder. The spirit reaches up, tangles their fingers into his hair, and pulls him down until he’s crashing into their desperate moans, lapping them up in ecstasy. They clench again, and it nearly undoes him. He screams their name this time, unaware and uncaring if the door is insufficient at keeping the sounds at bay from the workshop. Such a world does not exist at the moment, and woe be the idiot who tries to convince him it does.

The spirit gasps and cries over and over: “Koz! Kozmotis! Please, please, please!”

He can’t answer. Language only exists for the ones who have pretty lines for experiences they have perhaps had long ago, but can only recollect the more emotional parts of. For those willing to discard the ugly and carnal as an inferior memory to the beautiful, linguistically charged formations that cannot hope to manifest the duality of something so blinding yet freeing.

_Let the poets bark,_ he thinks, latching onto the spirit’s neck as he thrusts and thrusts and thrusts. They dig their nails into his back and refuse to let go. _Let the academics mince, the pathetic whinge, the scientists theorize. There is no true encapsulation such as this._

Their breathing becomes so haggard he worries they might stop altogether. Before he can check in, however, they lock their ankles together and meet his movements. He reaches down, working his thumb over their clit. If they’re not content to let him go at the moment, then he’ll make sure they’re not left behind.

They cry out at the touch. Slow circles, then faster, then he stops. Not for long, as he continues to thrust and swirl over them, nearly jamming his own finger in the mire. They open their eyes, locking their gaze with his.

Gods above and around and below, what he would do to keep their brilliant eyes complete in his memory, to smolder eternally in his soul as they do right now. And he has eternity. They both have the unnecessarily incomprehensible length of infinity to keep this up. To cling together. To find safe harbor in each other’s broken gaze.

“Kozmotis!” they cry out. He’s getting erratic at this point.

“Yes!” he cries, hunching over them to get better leverage. They twitch under his touch as well, a string of moans and noise failing to cobble together the basic means of conveyance. “Yes, darling, yes!”

They freeze against each other. His cock erupts inside them, the pressure too much to contain after all this. They reach down and grab his hand at their clit. They hump against it until they, too, are spasming, arching up into him with words lost as they can only but choke on their climax as it possesses them.

“Kozmotis…” they gasp.

They hover for a moment, and then drop back against the mattress. Their eyes close, though they continue to run their silver-wrapped hands over themself. They clutch themself as he reluctantly drags himself from their tight warmth, managing to roll to his side before his strength gives out and he drops onto them. Much as he wants to merely hold them until he can muster the energy again, he cracks his eye open and watches them pinch and caress themself as their desperate breaths slowly… slowly… agonizingly even out.

He eventually slides his arms around them, and they turn to face him. Their arms close around him, tracing simple shapes all across his back. He croons, wrapping his leg over theirs and drawing them nearer.

*************

“It’s cold here,” he uses as the excuse to keep you in his arms for the next while. “You’re warmer than I am.”

You lay together for a bit, until the high of climax wears off and you can focus on him again. He lazily watches you from the corner of his eyes. Your heart lurches.

“Koz,” you whisper once again. He lifts his hand to cup your face, blinking slowly and smiling as the edges of his eyes gleam with the beginnings of tears. “Koz…”

You lean to kiss him. This isn’t the end of your journey, by far. This is hardly even the middle, in the grand scheme of forever. But it must be said before cowardice gets the better of you again:

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~welcome to the end of part 2!~~ wowie i never realized id get this far. im gonna take a 2 week break from posting so i can gather my thoughts for part 3. posting will resume Monday, October 19th.
> 
> thanks for sticking with me this far. kudos, comment, subscribe, share, whatever floats ya boat, and i'll see ya in a few weeks!


	57. Antarctica

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lets get this bread

You hope that, someday soon, you can finally be in an environment that isn’t snowy, icy, cold, freezing, any of that. And that you can stay there for a long time.

It’s about a week after the battle at the Pole. Everyone is still on edge, even moreso since the fearlings have been quiet, and you’ve all been taking shifts guarding the Palace and Source. Bunny was reluctant to have you back in the Warren at all, but Easter is only days away at this point, and he still has to refine a few more things. But in between your shifts, you’ve been prepping for a small expedition.

“It’s got to be the Antarctic spire,” Koz had said. “It’s such a remote area that, if I recall correctly, none of you ever visit.”

North, Sandy, and Katherine had agreed. After all, no sense in going out of their way if there were no kids to help.

“The shadows think all together most of the time, but even they can get lazy.” Koz ran his fingers over a few maps of the continent that ranged from modern to ancient, tracing the likely routes they’ll take. “No Guardians to hide from means no reason to stay on full alert.”

You were buzzing during the whole week of preparation, gathering and cleaning sample bottles, and creating a new stock of arrows. You’ll meet some sort of resistance there, you all know this, so careful preparation for so many contingencies is the goal. But at the same time, the idea of new field work reinvigorated you. As did having Koz around more.

He rides behind you on Kidra, one arm around your waist to steady himself, the other holding a compass close enough to his face that he can see which way it points properly.

“Chances are it won’t be at the magnetic south,” Katherine had said a few days ago. “Not if they’ve been hiding them in magic-adjacent zones. Speaking of which…” She rolled out a document. “We checked around the Pole and the Island, but there doesn’t seem to be anything built there. No spire around Ganderly, either, but there has been more shadow activity lately to the farthest southern edges.”

“That was part of the original plan,” Koz replied. “Teeth, Source, Ganderly, Pole, Island. That was the trajectory I set them on.” He glanced at her and added, “Sorry.”

“Santoff Claussen?” North asked before the moment could get too awkward.

“Nothing in or around the forest, nothing in the main town,” Katherine said. “They’re keeping their eyes peeled, though.”

“Good.”

You check your watch; a few hours until the first expected rendezvous. Like the north, the south pole isn’t so far past the equinox that it’s left in one perpetual time of day. But you’re aiming to be in and out before your short window of daylight—what little phases through the dense clouds—expires. Koz keeps looking around as you nudge Kidra forward. He sighs and leans into you.

“What’s wrong”

“Nothi—” You turn just enough to give him some side-eye. He tries again, “I keep hoping that she’ll show up sometime.”

His daughter. She hasn’t shown up since the battle, not even in an obscured, hazy, giant form. You’ve mostly been alternating between replaying the conversation you had with her before the shadow confrontation and wondering when the right time would be to tell Koz that she killed you. And wondering yet again if that information is even necessary to share.

_It bothers me enough that it’ll probably have to come out at some point,_ you figure. You reply, “What will you say to her when you see her again?”

“If I see her again, you mean.” 

“No,” you say firmly. “I mean when. This planet’s only so big, right? And you said you’ll be doing more globe-hopping soon?”

He lifts the hand off your waist a bit and spreads out his fingers. There’s a small flicker, and a silver strand appears, wrapping up and down his pinky, complete with a bow. He hasn’t exactly had time to sit down and process these new powers, but he knows it’s related to the girl who helped him on Thera. Rina, he’d said her name is. The thread fades and he settles his hand back to you, running his fingers from your waist to just below your chest. You jump at the sudden move and he laughs, nuzzling into your ear.

“I don’t plan on going too far just yet,” he mutters to you. He lifts the edge of your hood and laves his tongue around the shell of your ear, a jolt of cold rushing over it in the one second it’s exposed. He replaces the hood, chuckling as you flinch and rub your ear against your shoulder to clear the sensation. “You and I have unfinished business, I believe.”

“Boy, do we,” you say, lacing your fingers through the ones at your chest. You bring the hand up, expose his wrist, and give it a sharp bite. You hold him close as he yelps, laughing in revenge. But before too long, the cold, dry air makes you cough too much, and you return to riding in silence.

*************

There’s a loud shout, and then a shadow passes overhead. The spirit pulls up on Kidra, and they stop, waiting for Jack to meet them on the ground. He floats down and yells, “About ten miles out!” He then smirks at Kozmotis. “Remember our confrontation here way back when?”

“Of course,” he grumbles in reply. There was a whole tower of ice and black sand at the end of that argument. He looks at the staff, whole and safe in Jack’s hands. Honestly, he figured the boy would have destroyed the pillar at some point, if only to prove some sort of personal point to himself. “Why?”

“It’s the spire.”

There’s a second’s pause, and then he blurts out. “Are you sure?”

He nods. The spirit clarifies a few things, making some notes on a map they’d brought. Kozmotis just marvels at the fact that the icy behemoth they inadvertently created fifty years back still stands. 

“The structure is really in a magic-adjacent zone?” He has to know.

“Apparently, yeah,” he says. “I haven’t been around to North yet, but it's kinda wild isn't it? Course, it also makes shiver if I get within one hundred yards of it, so yeah.” He holds up a small, glowing wand. North had created it as a crude means of examining the magical energy coming from it. “North can read this thing's flashing, but it went crazy when I got near it, so I think this one is a major source of power. Dunno if it's moreso than the others, though.”

“Okay!” the spirit says. “We’ll keep that in mind as we go.”

Jack hurtles himself into the air, giving a wide berth around the area before disappearing. The spirit writes a few more things down, scribbles out some others, and then nudges Kidra into motion again. They tighten their core, holding on to their pet with just their legs as they continue to pore over their notes. They shake their head.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “And don’t you dare tell me ‘nothing.’”

They laugh and sigh. “It’s just… if the spires are an array of some sort—one that can shoot shadows out of the atmosphere—then I want to know why they create and emanate so much power. Are they simultaneously generators of some sort? Are they like power transformers? The one in Australia seemed to be affecting the nature around it, so is it some sort of suction from the planet?”

They start going into far more technical terms than he can keep up with, and all he can do is nod and let them speak. They actually talk themself out of a few solutions, and he can only laugh and try to bury himself into them with how excited they get. He closes his eyes for a moment, barely a second, and instantly the image of his former wife flashes before him. Then his daughter, both her young self and her grown spirit form. He forces his eyes back open, and all he’s left with is crushing guilt.

Trying to bully Sanderson into telling him everything had gotten him nowhere except into an awkward position of being on the verge of pissing off possibly the most powerful spirit on the planet. Sanderson has been avoiding him for the last few days, not acknowledging him at strategy meetings or bothering to look at him.

“I was excited to welcome Kozmotis back,” he’d said when confronted yet again. “But you’re a far cry from the humble general I admired.”

“As far as I’m concerned, the general is dead, and has been dead for at least a thousand years,” Komotis had hissed back. “And you’re at least partly responsible for killing him.”

Sanderson had deflated, eyes wide. Kozmotis felt that pesky guilt again—it’d been creeping into his regular emotional rotation for awhile now—but he refused to apologize. So much of the Golden Age has been laden onto his shoulders to feel guilt over, but if he can accept that responsibility, then the ones who decided he was beyond saving can bear their own load.

They parted, neither getting what they wanted, and Kozmotis had taken to regular sparring matches with North to work things out instead.

He and the spirit press on for a few more hours until a dark spot creeps up on the horizon. It’s not long before North trots into view, also holding onto his poor steed’s back with just his legs. At least he uses stirrups and a saddle. Then again, remembering that the spirit is riding bareback and barely rocking too much to distract them… Such casual strength contained in their body. He tries to disguise a reflexive jerk against them as a twitch. Of cold. Of eagerness.

North calls out, waves, and they draw up next to each other.

*************

“So based on what Jack said—”

“Yes, he believes it is spire of great power—”

“Generator? Transformer? Does it create its own aura?”

“I have similar questions. Such as if spires, being contained to magic-adjacent areas, actually have much structural integrity—”

The first five minutes of the second rendezvous with North is you and him trading hypotheses and questions. You haven’t felt this inspired in ages. He’s a very different scientist, more superstitious engineer than chemist, for sure, given his age. But he can match your queries and bounce right off of them, and the fact he was tutored in wizardry by the same guy who wrote that “beginner’s” book to magic Katherine lent you helps immensely. He’d bragged to you about creating some sort of robot in the fifteenth century or so when he was barely qualified in magic, and no one could stop him from then on.

He holds up the wand Jack showed you.

“See pulse?”

You watch as the glow brightens and recedes in a predictable manner. Bright, recede, bright, dull. You nod.

“Is reminiscent of belief. Exact pattern, but wand is crude device. Fastly made, so I cannot tell if it reads one hundred percent like belief. Not my best work.”

“Still, it’s just reinforcing what the globe hinted at,” you reply. “If the spires somehow emanate belief, even if they’re located in parts of the world that’re swamped with fear and depression, then they must be converting--”

“Converting the power from something—or many things—that can transform into belief.”

“You know more about belief than I do, man. What’s it usually made of?”

North shrugs. “Never explored that factor. Always just… believed in belief. Things sort themselves out from there, usually.”

You sigh. North was your best bet at getting some sort of scientific answer. Maybe it’s because he was mortal in a vastly different era, maybe he’s been immortal for too long, but his admittedly defeated-sounding answer isn’t enough to satisfy you. Frankly, for as long as you exist in this immortal stasis, nothing will satisfy you in the long run.

You’ve been talking to Koz about that. He can only grant you so much insight, however, because most of his memories are clouded or influenced or informed by his time snug within the shadows. He’s also been alive so long that incomprehensible time lengths to you are barely worth a yawn to him.

To be honest, the one thing you never contemplated about ghost-hood or immortality is the implications of longevity. It seemed like such a moot point during your life. You had your spouse. You had approximately one hundred years, average of eighty-five, to accomplish everything important.

_Well, thirty-eight ain’t terrible. Not great, but not fifteen, that’s for sure._ You’ve thought about it recently, and you would be mortified if you’d become a spirit at fifteen. You're in awe at Jack for how he’s handled it over the centuries.

“According to Jack, spire is mere miles away!” North’s voice pulls you back to the present.

You and he coordinate a bit on how you’re going to approach the spire. Theoretically, you’re supposed to come from different angles a few degrees longitudinal from each other. You begged to take a route that passed as many research facilities as possible because for a long while, you wanted nothing more than to do research at the south pole. Life sidetracked you a bit, but the childhood dream still lingered deep within your soul, and the Guardians of Childhood only sighed and smiled as they relented.

What you didn’t tell them—only told Koz—was that you sneaked around as a kid and watched _The Thing_ even though your parents told you it’d give you nightmares.

“And despite _everything_ that movie says, that’s what made you want to pursue chemistry and study in Antarctica?” he said, trying to stifle a smile.

“The blood thing was really compelling! It was horrifying, yeah, but I was just that much more interested.”

“Knowing your fascination with extraterrestrials, I’m not that surprised.” He’d kissed you and whispered, “Or should I say… ‘aliens?’” and you jumped him in an instant. To his dismay, you could only ramble on about the alien and cryptid hunting shows you gobbled up during your life for an hour or so until he finally pulled you down and you had yet another tumble in your Pole bedroom.

Kozmotis and Kidra start to get antsy the longer you and North trade questions and musings. Third rendezvous is happening sooner than later, anyways, so you leave North with a few new ideas, and then Kidra starts dragging you onward through the icy wastes.

*************

It’s just as he remembers. The structure pierces the heavens, a monument to cold and darkness and the overlap that connects the two. He has a smidge of pride that it still stands. And he has overwhelming shame that a sculptural ode to his folly remains anywhere on this planet to bear witness to those who come across it.

Jack alights from the air, silently settling onto the snow as barefoot and thinly-covered as ever. He rubs Kidra’s ear for a second, chuckling as they lick his palm, and he peeks over the same rocky crag that Kozmotis does. The fearlings dart back and forth, but mostly aimlessly. A Nightmare Man must be behind this, but he cannot see one at the moment.

“You really didn’t plan this, right?” Jack asks.

“No!” Kozmotis responds. “As I keep assuring you all, this spire gambit is beyond what I ever conceived as possible for the shadows. I didn’t even know they were planning something of this magnitude while I was still Pitch Black.” He takes in an abbreviated breath and mutters, “Pitch was more of an idiot than he ever knew.”

“I mean, yeah?” Jack laughs and winds himself into the air. It’s hard to remember that he’s been hobbled by the takeover of Burgess when he’s so lively in the snowy parts of the world. Six months seems to have had no effect on his antics. The frequent breaks he takes between large power usages and the dark circles around his eyes are the only giveaways. “That’s a you problem, though.”

Kozmotis flinches. He doesn’t let on that he’s been exposed, however. Instead, he observes the multitudes of fearlings and nightmares that surround the spire. As expected, they’re not on edge, as the ones surrounding the Thera spire had been. The fearlings are more interested in bothering the nightmares, which act at grazing despite the complete lack of grass or grains at the south pole.

Kozmotis sighs at the lack of motivation his former troops have. Surely he made a better impression than this; he begs the laws of the universe that control coincidences that he made a better impression to the shadows than this. On the other hand, if they’re making a habit out of ignoring his previous leadership, that makes it all the easier to crush them.

“So, North should be finishing setting the emergency portals up,” Jack continues. “He’ll be on standby if you need him, and once you give the signal I’ll yeet myself into distraction mode.”

“You sure you’re okay for this?” the spirit says. “If you were at your peak, it’d be no problem but—”

“I’m not gonna be fighting them, so yeah, I’m good. Plus Bunny got me these.” He tosses a pack of the rabbit’s explosive eggs up and down. The spirit makes a worried noise and holds their hand out to make him stop. He twirls his staff, smiling. “And after this goes down, we’re that much closer to cleaning Burgess up, right? I can stand a little bit of distraction duty til then.”

He lifts off before they can say anything else, waving as he disappears to his position. Kozmotis and the spirit give Kidra a moment of rest until North sends a signal that he’s done reinforcing the perimeter. He leans down and presses a quick kiss to them, and they return it before they both mount up and get ready to start.


	58. First Strike Back

Once you settle onto Kidra, you take out an orange signal crystal and squeeze it for ten seconds. Koz wraps one arm around you, and keeps his other hand on the hilt of his sword. A few seconds later, there’s a return signal, and then a tinny yell. As it gets louder, you see a shimmering streak zoom right towards the spire.

The masses of fearlings perk up, first as the nightmares spook from the noise, and then as they spot the incoming Guardian. They start chattering and scrambling. Jack glows bright. You slip Kidra out from the cover a bit, whistling for them to get ready. They tense, ears back and listening.

The glow around Jack peaks and releases into a jagged, icy blast. It cracks the air and slams into the spire, creating a new layer of ice around the top. The spire sways and flashes violet for a moment, but remains standing and whole. A shame; you’d really been hoping the first attack would knock part of it loose and you just had to get in and out from there. Koz shifts behind you, sighing, and he hands you one of the hammer and pick sets from your pack. Jack hovers, then drops to a small spike of ice at the edge of the clearing where he wobbles for a moment.

The fearings lunge into motion.

You whistle.

Kidra leaps high into the air. As they do, you nudge them forward, and just as they start to spread their limbs out to catch the air on their gliding membrane, you whistle for them to halt. Kidra grumbles, but obliges, instead positioning themself like they had way back on Thera during their rescue. You’re almost all the way there, ready to command Kidra to strike, when the fearlings notice.

A small pack of them breaks off from the larger group heading for Jack. They swing themselves onto a few wild nightmares, batter them into submission, and make their way to intercept you.

_Come on._ You will Kidra to fall faster, whistling so they can be ready to strike. Koz squeezes in, holding his own pick out in front of him so he can dig into the spire as soon as you knock into it. Once you’re close enough, you whistle again, and Kidra bellows as they lash out with their foreclaws.

The claws dig in to the spire with a slight _ting._ The crystal-like structure cracks around the impact site, but holds. Kidra swings until they’re holding on like a bat. They remove their claw and try to gnaw at the nearest spike. At the first crunch of their jaws, it cracks, a few stray pieces falling away too fast for you to catch. The screeching fearlings get closer and closer.

Explosions go off to your side, and Jack swoops through the air. He pauses for a moment, looks at the egg in his hand, then to his staff, and he smiles. He tosses the egg into the air and swings his staff at it. You wince, hoping he knows what he’s doing, but as the staff makes contact with the egg, it explodes. Jack shoots backwards and just manages to avoid getting impaled on the spire’s many spikes.

“Jack?” you call. He raises a thumb into the air. And then he raises his other hand, a signal crystal gleaming in it. He points to it and squeezes it tight. “Okay! We’ll get to work!”

Your crystal grows warm and vibrates as Kidra slinks down the spire. Once you’re on the ground, it warms and buzzes again in North’s reply pattern. He’ll be arriving in seconds. You immediately hop off and dig the pike into the nearest section.

*************

Kozmotis stands to the spirit’s side, tossing his pick to the ground in favor of drawing his sword and summoning a bit of magic to his fingers. He whistles for Kidra, and they ready themself, growling and snarling and flicking their ears toward the fearlings. He readies himself and glances back. His spirit is hammering away at the crystal.

He shivers. If it weren’t for the adrenaline pumping through him at the moment, the dizzying, dreadful atmosphere of the spire would be choking him, and he’s fairly sure it’s making the spirit’s fingers tremble and the pick slip. A faint, high-pitched drone starts up in the ear closest to the spire, eventually traveling across his head and creating a dissonant note in his other.

Jack sloppily flies off from the spire after recovering from an explosion to his face. He suddenly turns to face the other end of the small area, and then whoops and loops around. He scatters a few more eggs along the perimeter. The snow and colorful residue fade and North is there, leading a charge of yetis into the camp. The fearlings split into three: a column of them piling upon each other to reach Jack, a contingent spreading out to block North, and a smaller wave heading right for him and the spirit.

Kozmotis lashes out at the nearest wave with his power. The tethers shoot out, winding around about five fearlings. He weaves the threads together, drawing them all close to each other, and then wraps his end around his arm twice to get a better grip before digging his heels into the ground as best he can, and yanking. The shadows clash together and drag along the ground, tripping and confusing a few others as they’re forced underfoot. Kozmotis whistles, and Kidra lunges, slicing their claws through as many fearlings as they can. They ram into a few of them, tossing them up into the air with their tusks.

Beside him, the spirit stops hammering for a moment, watching their pet. He smiles to them, but they don’t notice, lost in an odd expression. Worry? Concern? He’s not sure. But he knows he’s never seen them look at Kidra that way before. After a moment, they shake their head, wipe their brow, and grab a few containers.

He whips out a new set of tethers, trying to weave them together like a net. There are, perhaps, larger gaps than he’d prefer, but it holds enough fearlings down as is. Once again, he tightens the threads and drags them toward him. This time, Kozmotis dives in himself, slicing and thrusting his sword into the pile of shadows squealing and trying to shove each other in the path of the blade. In a matter of moments, they’re all reduced to wisps, and a familiar pride blossoms within him.

He turns again to his spirit, and they’re chipping away at the spire again, a few containers filled with a violet glow littering the ground at their feet. He slides in and starts picking them up, shoving them into the open pack.

“Almost done?” he asks.

They nod. “Yeah, I just want to be sure I have more than enough in case I have to go through a lot more rounds of studies than I’m anticipating.”

He glances back where Kidra is barely fending off the wave of fearlings that keeps closing in and strengthening its ranks. He retrieves his own pick and darts beside them, trying to chip away at the base of a whole spike. The spirit stops what they’re doing and joins him, taking the opposite side.

Kidra bellows again, charging through the advancing line and tossing more fearlings over them. Once again, the spirit stops and watches them, sharply inhaling and furrowing their brow.

“We’re almost through,” he says, slowly yet firmly.

They keep looking. He calls their name, and they spin back around, glance at the spike, and then grasp it in their hands to wrench it back and forth. Kozmotis keeps chipping away to weaken the base. There’s a crack, and a fissure shoots around the base, small particles splintering away, barely missing his face.

“Move away for a second!” they say.

He backs up. The spirit grabs two spikes above them, and hauls themself off the ground to kick at the one they’ve been trying to break off. He glances back at Kidra. They’ve stopped charging. Instead, they’re growling and giving threatening swipes that the fearlings avoid. But the line still advances. And a part of it is creeping around in an arc to surround them.

*************

Seeing Kidra toss fearlings over their body like that… If what Mother Nature said is true, then they’re what the beasts from that night actually looked like. It makes terrifying sense the more you think about it. The hunched form you barely saw as the tree splinters cascaded over them. The growling, bellowing, bleating. The tusks; you hadn’t had time to really concentrate on the tusks that impaled you at first, not when three seconds later spikes of earth pinned you against the tree.

In front of your son.

_Maybe Jordan didn’t see, though._ You have to hope that’s the case. _Maybe he was too preoccupied yelling at her that he didn’t see it happen._

As you give the spike one more kick, it finally gives and falls away from the spire. You drop to the ground, and reach for it, nearly colliding with Koz as he does the same. He wraps an arm around you, whistling, and you see the fearlings making their way to surround you. He shoves the spike into your bag as Kidra lopes up. You swing it over yourself, then yourself over Kidra’s neck. Koz is right behind you, and you whistle in unison.

Kidra takes a moment, adjusting themself while keeping track of the fearlings. They spring into the air as the fearlings close in, a few of the shadows brushing their claws over them. You grip your knees tightly around them as they attach to the spire again and crawl up. They slip on the new patch of ice covering the top and fall about five feet. The jolt shakes you off of Kidra, and you nearly don’t grab around their neck in time to prevent the fall. And then the wind gets knocked out of you as Koz also falls, his arms punching your stomach as he holds tight. It takes a moment of adjustment, but you hold on as Kidra drags the two of you to settle at the top of the spire, and you take a moment to breathe and recoup yourselves.

Kozmotis drags his own crystal out and squeezes it, hand apologetically massaging your stomach as he glances around. You join him in scanning the area for the others. Jack zips across the sky and dives back to the fearlings, whacking a bunch of them with his staff and a small jolt of his magic, creating a small block of iced shadows. North is laughing and spinning as he slices through wave after wave. A second later, he pauses, and reaches into his pocket. His crystal gleams, and he looks up at the spire. You wave and point toward the perimeter. A return signal comes a second later.

North starts yelling for the yetis to hold the line and push back as much as they can. He dashes across the snow, Jack swooping in and skating backwards right behind him, watching for any surprises. You check around yourself, and sure enough, a pile of fearlings are winding their way up the spire. The squirming and chattering gets louder and louder until it’s a steady whine pulsing against your ears. No, just one ear. The ear on the side of your head with the mark.

“Hurry,” Koz says behind you. He holds on with both hands to adjust his grip, his sword crossing you for a second before it draws back.

The yetis slowly back up, occasionally swinging at some of the feistier fearlings, dissipating one or two as you sit there, waiting. Finally, you just see a glint in the distance, and then a series of glows light up along the lines of yetis. They roar and two rows retreat. The fearlings lash out at the weakening line, but they hold.

Kidra whines and tries to ready themself to spring. “No!” you yell at them, whistling to reinforce the order.

“Darling, are—”

“Not now,” you say as the next wave of yetis breaks and retreats.

The whining gets louder, and you can heart he scraping of the fearlings’ claws on the spire. You shake your head, trying to make the sound less close to you, rather than like it’s right up against your eardrum, and coupled with the pulsing whine, it’s making you go dizzy.

A cold sensation wipes across your shoulder, and you gasp and shiver and your eyes close halfway.

“Easy,” Koz says, giving you a squeeze.

The smell of fresh greenery and soil, the tingle of sand. He massages a bit more of the salve into the mark along your neck, and as he rubs it along your jaw, the noise muffles. Just a bit. Enough to bring you back to your senses. Kidra’s still waiting for your command, and the rest of the yetis are disappearing towards North. The fearling line stymies only because Jack zips in yet again and drops another salvo. Koz thrashes behind you for a moment, swinging his arm, and a pained squeal of a fearling makes its way to you.

“We have to go now,” he says, and he doesn’t wait for you to give the whistle. Kidra takes off, slipping just once on the ice before catching in the air and gliding around to the small red dot in the near distance.

*************

As Kidra starts gliding, Jack dumps everything he has left and loops until he’s flying even with them. The spectacular, multi-color display seems just as fitting for summer celebration, though the pastels tinge it with the tell-tale spirit of spring. Jack gives a small salute, and then watches their tails, one hand around Kidra’s back leg.

Kozmotis manages to sheathe his sword and hold tight to the spirit, reaching up and continuing to massage the salve into their shoulder. He grits his teeth. It’s getting worse, growing steadily now. The salve helps keep the mark at bay only so much, but it cannot abate it. As far as he understands, they’re going to have to remove the shadows still lingering under the surface in order to exorcise the corruption fully. Even then, he cannot guarantee that they’ll be left without a scar.

It’s not fair. Just as they verbally reciprocate his feelings, his spirit still might be lost. He shakes his head and nuzzles against their back. _No. I won’t let it happen. Perhaps once the spirit breaks down the components of the spires, there’ll be a solution. That’s how humans make vaccines and medicines, correct? They use whatever the infection is to turn the body against it?_

Jack screams something and a second later, Kidra bellows and falters. The spirit kicks them and whistles, and their creature just manages to pull into a glide to soften the crash.

They scatter on impact, sliding across the ice in various directions. He drags himself up and sees the whirling column of darkness come in for a second strike. The spirit slides up beside him, and Jack touches down on his other side. The spirit summons their power to their fingertips and holds out their hands to them. Kozmotis and Jack simultaneously charge up their own magics.

They touch and hold on to the silver strands and blue energy. The iridescence catches on both, crackling up and down the streams. The shadow picks up speed as it dives, and as it gets closer, Kozmotis sees that it’s not a whirl of fearlings working together, but woven tendrils of pure darkness. He glances just past the black.

A Nightmare Man looms at the edge of the area, a burble of fearlings at its feet. As they lock eyes, the creature scrunches its face up, and its hollow eyes squint.

The spirit starts combining the threads and ice, curling them together until it becomes a shining, woven rope of metallic blue.

“Help me!” they cry, grabbing hold of one end, sweat pouring and freezing in streams down their face. Kozmotis and Jack grab hold. “Whip it!”

All three haul backwards, and on a count of three, lurch forward. A lumbering wave goes down the rope until the end snaps against the shadows and catches in the gestalt. They try to hold on for a second, but it’s ripped out of their grasps and braids itself into the tangles.

Laughter erupts from the site of impact. Giggles, belly laughs, hisses, and snorts. The strings glow, and the laughter grows in volume until it drowns everything out. Kozmotis has to hold himself against the force of it, as it becomes more than sound. It rebounds across the ice, piercing into all of them and shoving them back a few feet. The spirit grabs hold of him, their other hand latching onto their bag to keep it from slipping away.

The glowing threads fork like rivers and spread until the column is turning blue from the top down. It becomes solid for a moment, and then slowly starts to dissipate into the air like sighs settling over the area.

“We must go!” North yanks Jack to his feet, taps Kozmotis on the shoulder, and whistles for Kidra. They follow him, stumbling across the ice to a swirl about a hundred yards away.

Kozmotis chances a look back in time to see the Nightmare Man coil and then shoot out several more shadow tendrils from its being. The tendrils batter into the blue laughter, some catching the metallic sheen, but most of them snap through the power. It starts to wind up again just as they reach the portal.

“In, in!”

North shoves them through, and they slide back into the main hub area of the Pole. The momentum carries them over the glossy floors, unable to stop themselves before they bump into a wall of yetis. The spirit goes down, and as they’re clutching him, so does Kozmotis. Jack recovers enough to cartwheel into the air and stabilize there.

“You all right?” The fairy steps up beside them, a sword in her hand. She leans down to the spirit, who nods. Then she moves over to the portal. “Come on, North…”

She twirls her saber as her wings beat in an arrhythmic pattern. Another second later, the portal starts to shrink, and a large silhouette starts coming closer through it. The fairy goes on guard, dragging her second sword out. Just as it starts to accelerate its shrinking, the portal spits out North. He tumbles a few feet, and then comes to rest where she had been standing. She hovers above him, watching. The portal closes with a vague sucking sound, and the workshop silences.

Kozmotis checks the spirit over, looking at the mark. But they ease out of his grasp to sit back and rub their face. Kidra steps over to them, nuzzling their faces together. The spirit freezes for a second, then strokes their hand down Kidra’s neck.

“You dead, old man?” the fairy chuckles. She reaches down to help North up.

“Do not count me out just yet, Tooth. I still have fight in me!”

He stands, readjusts himself, and sheathes his sword. The fairy does the same, and Jack settles down next to them. Kozmotis helps his spirit stand, and they hold out the bag, smiling, and show the rest of the group, a faint, violet pulse glowing over everyone’s faces.


	59. Cranking Up The Lab

“Hand me the vial with the, uh…” You glance up from the microscope and point in the general direction you know it’s in. But the words fail you for a second. A small fairy lands on your finger, chirps, and shrugs as they look around. You finally find the phrase and snap your fingers, scaring them off. “The one with the ‘Fun’ label, please!”

You’ve had access to your Pole lab for some time now, but it’s mostly been a blank, packed-up space. On some level, you’d been hoping they’d let you go back to your clearing sooner than later, but two and a half months into technical imprisonment, you give up trying to spare yourself the moving pains. On the bright side, whenever you do go back home, you now have a whole slew of people you can goad into helping you, including a kind, jolly gentleman who owns the magical equivalent of a flatbed truck.

For now, notes line the walls of your lab space, everything from rough scribbles to neat rows of longhand script. That book finally gave you the right direction to head with with regards to what magic actually looks like on a base level. Well, the one “beginner” treatise, and a few other documents Katherine scoured up for you. She thumbs through, and passive-aggressively organizes, the milk crates of journal clippings, outdated textbooks, and a collection of neat hardcover jackets you’ve accumulated over the decades. At least when she’s done, the crates will actually make a half-decent bookshelf like you originally intended for them way back when. Though, you wince a little every time she holds up a book with water damaged edges and makes a hissing inhale. To be fair, sample bottles, slides, and even more notes cover every inch of your worktable because you’ve never been a neat and clean person. More than a few stray feathers are cast about as they flutter off of the ever-moving fairies and their leader.

_More samples, I guess._

Toothiana runs her finger over the tube rack you're pointing to, and they rattle softly. She hums, pulls one out, and places it into your outstretched hand. You double check the label, and after confirming it’s the one you want, you prep a slide with it and peer back into the microscope.

“What do you see?”

She hovers over you, and you can feel her body heat so plainly that she can’t be more than a foot away. Coupled with Katherine, the small space is probably the stuffiest area you’ve been in since being brought to the Pole. Tooth’s wings flutter, sounding like crickets chirping as they rub against each other. A few of the small fairies land on your hunched shoulders and head, one of them pushing against your cheek as they try to take a peek while you’re still pressing against the lens. You lean back a bit, and immediately three crowd in. You rub the bridge of your nose.

“The essence of fun, I think,” you reply. “Since I lived in a subtropical place, I never actually got a hold of Jack’s magic to study when I was alone. Technically, not yours, either, Katherine.”

She looks up for a moment and hums. She waves her finger around, and an aurora-like beam of the mythosphere briefly shines over the ceiling, then fades just as quickly and immaterially.

You continue, “And the most I had to go from with North is reindeer bits, which was probably already a sign of something relatively weird going on since even my local zoo doesn’t have them on exhibit—” You notice Toothiana’s eyes glazing over as she slowly nods. You cough. “Maybe if I’d been in the right place at the right time on the two days a year it gets cold enough to freeze, I’d’ve found some weird snow or ice or grass frost to collect, but it was always a long shot.”

You nudge the small fairies out of the way and motion for her to look. She peers in, then says, “I think it’s a little blurry?”

You show her how to adjust the lens knobs, and a few seconds later, she gasps. She adjusts one more time and gasps louder, her wings kicking up so suddenly, they knock into your face before you can get a safe distance.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at, but it’s beautiful!” She grins at you. “What does it mean?”

“I’m guessing the superficial crystalline structure is just an echo of Jack's ice powers. See, if you look at—”

You shove your self away from the desk, wheeling the chair as best you can over to Katherine. She steps aside and lets you rummage through the piles. It takes a bit longer than you thought it would; now that everything’s organized you can’t find anything. Eventually, you haul out a very, very old coffee table book of items under microscopes and flip to the sections on ice, water, and snowflakes. “If you look at common ice, it’s not too different from what we’ve got here.

“But!” You pull the slide out and carefully lift it to show her. “The ice here has melted into water. But it still maintains the crystalline formations, just like…”

You leap up, scaring the fairies again as you rummage around the opposite wall, carefully filing through a slide box until you find the ones you need. You zip back over and let her look again, sliding the three different ones back and forth.

“The snow within a certain range of the Pole does a similar thing: crystalline even when melted. Compare that to regular melted water and Jack’s ice.”

“The regular water doesn’t have anything in it except for…” She jerks back from the lens. “What is that?”

You shrug. “Microscopic bacteria or fungi or whatever. Which is another thing because while life forms can maybe not _thrive_ after being frozen in ice—usually. Sometimes they need a little prodding to really get them going, but there’s a reason why really hot and really cold temps are recommended for fighting disease bacteria and viruses—What interests me most is that there are zero traces of microorganisms in either the Pole water or Jack’s ice water.”

You take a deep breath and look at both of them. Katherine’s looking off into the corner, eyes flickering back and forth, her fingers tugging at her hair as she parses your speech. Toothiana, meanwhile, holds her steepled fingers against her mouth, nodding. Her fairies decorate her shoulders, flitting their heads from you to her, eyes wide in desperation as they chirp curiously.

“But what exactly does that _mean?”_ she says.

“I think it might mean that either organic life has an extremely difficult time living within a majority-magic composition of water, or they just cannot live in magic altogether. And that could mean that there is an inherent, base difference between magic and, um… science.”

“Which, for us battling the shadows, means?” Katherine says.

“That I could, eventually, possibly, isolate the unique properties of shadows, see what its antithesis is, and thus make it easier to combat and/or destroy. Maybe.”

“That’s wonderful, though!” Tooth tries to loop in the air, but the low ceiling makes her retract and opt for twirling instead. “We’ll finally be able to get rid of the fearlings!”

“That’s…” You hate to burst her bubble. This is the most excited she’s looked since you started evacuating the teeth. Katherine catches your eye and shrugs with a commiserating smile. “That’s a long ways off. I’d have to definitively prove all of that first, and then dive into the meanings. And right now, I’m mostly trying to see how belief plays into all this. And what belief really means in terms of magic.”

Tooth hums and settles back to the ground, but only for a split-second before her feathers ruffle around her and she’s back to hovering. She looks off into the distance, crest raising and lowering, fairies taking off and buzzing around her. She then snaps out of the trance and rattles off a series of coordinates and specificities for a new round of tooth collection. The tiny fairies start zooming, and you leap up to open the door before they slam into it.

“Ah, ha ha, thanks,” she says, finally lowering herself to the floor.

You spend some time in silence, and then you hear a scratching at the door. Butterflies start up in your stomach, and as you open the door, they only get worse as Kidra lets themself in. They trot over to sniff at Katherine and then Tooth, who pat them and rub their ears until they flop over, tucking their dangerously long claws to their sides.

“Yes, I’m so sorry I tried to hit you when we first met,” Toothiana coos, rubbing their neck. Kidra doesn’t care and just pants contentedly, back paw twitching at the attention.

 _Would it be rude of me to kick them out of the lab?_ you think, cracking your knuckles. _Toothiana and Katherine can stay, but they’re both having fun right now. I guess they both could leave with Kidra, but I don’t mind them being here. They’ve helped me organize my thoughts a bit today. Maybe I should just concentrate and let Kidra lay there. They’re not starved for affection. I guess if they’re quiet, I can—_

Toothiana calls your name. Your vision refocuses from going fuzzy as you were thinking. She’s still petting Kidra, but she looks at you, concerned.

“What’s on your mind?” You shake your head. She rolls her eyes. “You’re breaking out in a sweat, don’t even try that.” You swat your hand up to your forehead and wipe, finding nothing but your skin and hairline. She smiles. “You look like you’re trying to light them on fire with your eyes.”

“I… It’s complicated.”

“Okay…” She goes back to petting Kidra, glancing at you once or twice more.

You glance one more time at Kidra, wondering if you can trust the word of Koz’s daughter—Mother Nature, apparently—that they look exactly like the beasts that tossed you around the night you died. The implications behind the fact that you sculpted Kidra out of thin air without ever having seen the fiends are staggering, and every passing thought you give them makes you dizzy and restless. Which agitates the slowly spreading mark on your shoulders.

You spin back to your desk and drag out a few more slides, taking up a pen and some paper to try and get as many observations down as possible before you start to cross-reference anything. You sink back into a good state of mind, calmly flicking between the melted ice, some of Tooth’s feathers, any scrap of eggshell you’ve been able to pilfer, gold sand, silver thread, and some moon resin.

“What unifies them?” you murmur.

There’s remnants of organic structures in them, those of which resemble anything organic. But whatever’s beyond that—the energy and bits that make the magical substances feel like each other rather than just objects—still eludes you. You feel like you’re on the cusp of understanding what magic is rather than just how to use it, but you just can’t quite reach the final conclusion. Assuming, of course, there’s any finality to your research; you hope it resembles chemistry enough that you’ll always have new discoveries to make.

There’s a nudge at your arm. You look to see Kidra burrowing under your elbow until their head rests in your lap. Stroking their neck, you feel them vibrate. And just under the purr-like sound, you feel a thrum of the powers that run through them. You hold them and close your eyes, trying to feel for it more clearly. Toothiana calls your name, but you ignore her to reach deep and try to catch the rhythm of the magics. It’s like a regular heartbeat, and as you concentrate, you swear you can feel a myriad of other small beats. They pulse in a melody together, but not in sync.

You open your eyes and run your hand over Kidra’s bony facial plate. They’ve protected you enough times that you’re sure you can trust them, but you still have so many questions, and you wonder if they can answer more than one of them in some way, shape, or form.

“Is that a breakthrough I sense?” Tooth asks.

“Very close to one,” you reply. Kidra fails to draw their forked tongue in all the way, and you laugh.

There’s a knock at the door, and then Kozmotis opens it. He steps inside smiling, and then freezes when he sees your guests.

“Ladies,” he says through his gritted teeth.

Toothiana nods his direction. Katherine busies herself with the crates again. You lead him back to the hallway. As you close the door behind you, he traps you between his arms and kisses you.

“Hi,” you say, pulling back long enough to make eye contact with him. He caresses your face. “I thought you and North were going to duke it out right now.”

“He was pulled into a last-minute consultation about production and design for December, so it’s a wash for today.” He leans in. “I was hoping we could maybe…”

“Not now!” You try to growl but it comes out as a giggle.

“I was going to say ‘go for a walk,’ seeing as the weather is nice. Relatively. And it’s been a bit since I had the opportunity to just enjoy your company.”

“You enjoy my company every day.”

He nods and nuzzles into your shoulder, letting his teeth graze over the tip of your collarbone.

“Koz!”

“What? Darling.” He holds your hands in his. “You’ve been cooped up in there for awhile. I want to make sure you’re okay—”

The door opens and Toothiana peeks through the crack.

“Sorry,” she says, stepping to the side. She opens the door wider and Kidra pushes past her. “They got antsy.”

The door clicks back into place, and Kidra stands between you and Koz. Their ears flicker all around, and then they decide to lay down. He laughs and reaches down to stroke their neck. They grumble and stretch out more, just as they had done ten or so minutes ago inside the lab. Koz gives them a final pat and stands back up. At the loss of attention, Kidra suddenly jumps up, tossing their head and mane back and forth, scooping forward with their neck.

A scooping motion that must look how it felt to be hauled up and over that night, right into a tree.

The most annoying thing about this whole situation is that you’re not angry or afraid. Not at Kidra, at least. Angry at Mother Nature, definitely, but Kidra sends you into more of an existential bent rather than pure horror. You’d had enough existential crises by the time you left undergrad that there was only ever numb musing left when the mood clocked you over the head.

“Darling…”

Kozmotis’s brow furrows, and he glances between you and Kidra, a question just behind his lips. You want to tell him it’s nothing, but that’s too obvious a lie. It’s more complicated than that. So complicated that you yourself aren’t even sure how you feel just yet. He caresses your cheek and leans down to kiss you again—softly, chastely.

“Whatever’s wrong, you can talk to me about it. You know that, right?”

You nod. “I know. I just… I’m still gathering my thoughts together about it.”

“You can also always bounce ideas off me. I may not know the technicalities of whatever it is, but I can be a sounding board.”

“Thank you,” you say. He hovers for a moment, apparently expecting something immediately. You lick your lips and try to explain, “I just don’t know how I feel about it yet. Once I parse it together, I’ll let you know, okay?”

He sets his jaw, trying not to look too disappointed, but he’s too easy to read in the light. You’d joked a day or so ago that if he ever took up poker, he’d have to make is opponents wear blindfolds for him to have a bluffing chance. You wrap your arms around his torso and lay your head on his chest, giving him a squeeze. He lightly rubs the nape of your neck.

“If…” he starts. “When you’re ready, let me know.”

“Of course.”

He holds you close. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

He sighs in relief and reluctantly lets go of you, heading back the way he came. Kidra wanders after him for a few yards, then looks back at you. You whistle for them to go, too, and the trot up beside Koz. He reaches out and strokes their ears as they disappear into the workshop.

You shake your head and sigh, guilt springing up. But what are you supposed to say? That his daughter killed you and you’d like to fight her in mortal combat over it? He’d asked you to see if Katherine had any resources on the Golden Age that she could possibly allow him to read. He’s been waffling back and forth about approaching Sandy simply because that’s his best source of information from that time. Seeing him even the least bit eager to know more about his past home is something you want to keep encouraging, but you don’t know if you can throw a wrench like this into his curiosity right now. But is it worth seeing him worry the longer you delay?

You spend five minutes trying to come to some sort of conclusion, but in the end, you simply turn around and re-enter the lab, hoping your research can distract you enough to give you what you need.

Katherine sits herself on the crate, giving up on the ordeal of organizing for now, and she watches you. Tooth runs her fingers over your slides, mouthing the labels you’ve put on them. As soon as she sees you, she flits away from the box and holds her hands behind her back. You glance between them and take a deep breath.

“Hey, this might seem like a weird question, but do you happen to know Mother Nature at all?”

They immediately stir, glancing at each other for a few moments as if having a silent, cautious conversation. As the seconds stretch out, Katherine shrugs

“We’d heard something about her come up recently,” she says slowly. “Sandy said… She’s not really his _daughter,_ is she?”

“She said so herself,” you reply. “Called Koz ‘Father’ and everything.”

Tooth lets out a deep sigh and leans against the wall.

“I’ve heard of her popping up every other century or so, but she mostly keeps to herself. I’m not sure if I’ve even heard her voice. Sandy actually asked me to try looking for her and recruiting her help a few centuries back when Pit—” She screws up her mouth, trying to decide which name to give. “When Pitch was acting up. She called up a storm that tossed me and my fairies back and forth, and only spoke to him. He’s pretty good at keeping secrets, so I still have no idea what they discussed. In the end, we left without her help and just barely managed to beat him back.”

“I know even less about her,” Katherine says. “But everything I’ve heard talks about how tempestuous and fickle she is.”

“Yeah, Sandy spoke about her like she was so powerful that he didn’t want to risk offending her.” Tooth snorts and scowls. “Not a great way to describe someone you consider a friend.”

“What has Pi—Ko…” Katherine rubs her temples. “What has your boyfriend said about her?”

“He barely remembers her. Other than that, he hasn’t really said anything about it, not even that we wants to track her down and find her to, I dunno, talk.” You roll your eyes. “Not that she seemed like she wanted to talk to him, anyway.”

The silence washes over you all again. Sighing, you clean up a bit, wiping a few things down and putting the slides and bottles into a chaotic order you can decipher. You catch Katherine’s thousand-yard stare and slight head shaking out of the corner of your eye.

“Need help?” Tooth hands you a tube rack.

You slide it next to a bunch of relevant samples, bottles of solutions, and several jars of the unused amplified sand. You bring a lot more to the forefront, placing empty containers down and grabbing other substances from the shelf like it’s a spice rack.

“Actually, yeah, I could use a few more pairs of hands.” You assemble several sections of items along the table and flick on your centrifuges. Over the loud death rattles of the machines warming up, you say, “I’ve got to assemble a few things before Easter. Let me show you how I make arrows.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me during this chapter: what do you MEAN i have to actually show a chemist doing chemist things?! im just a writer wtf do i know??? why did i do this to myself??????????????


	60. Dueling Thoughts

Kozmotis quickly shifts his position as North’s second blade sneaks past his guard. It leaves him open for a quick tap against his side. He skips back a step and a half to make sure he’s out of range of North for a moment so he can collect himself and put his mind back to the sparring match. As he moves away, however, North eases up and lowers his weapons.

“I have not seen you so distracted for awhile,” he says, crossing his arms and glancing at the wall.

Kozmotis glances up at the scores for this session as well, and he grimaces. 16-7. He really is distracted if North has twice as many points as he does. It’s been a hell of a learning curve to re-train with a blade, but he’s not _that_ awful. 

“What’s wrong? Is Sandy again?”

Kozmotis lunges and tries to take his own point, but North easily sidesteps him, grazing one of his swords against the rapier and twisting around so that they trade places.

“Come on, man! Either drive problem from your mind and give me real fight, or talk.”

Kozmotis declines to answer, slipping his sword down the outstretched cutlass in a scraping retort. They reverse positions yet again and start to circle. He watches the old man. Every twitch in his face, every shuffle of his feet, every movement of his sword. Kozmotis settles into the rhythm of the moment.

He feints, tapping North’s sword to test how on edge he is. There's the least bit of motion, the smallest jerk his arm makes, and his other sword comes up to cross his body. He twirls it between his fingers.

Kozmotis feints again, the exact same motions as before. This time, North holds steady, squinting a bit and flicking his eyes across him, studying his moves, too. The grip on his offhand sword tightens.

Kozmotis shivers, the hairs on the back of his neck raising. A wave of anticipation builds as the two stop circling, watching and waiting. Finally, he feints the same way one more time, and as soon as North takes the bait, he sidesteps the offhand thrust, parries the other sword, and slips behind the man to take his strike. He raises the sword and moves for the behemoth’s shoulder.

Sudden cold slices down his neck and drips to his back.

“Ahh!” Kozmotis tenses at the sensation, his eyes flying wide and his teeth grating. He spins around as a spritely giggle moves away from behind him. Jack thunks down onto the table just as he turns, legs crossed, pretending to look at his blank phone.

“Sup?”

“You little—”

He doesn’t get one step before the tips of North’s swords tap his shoulders, catching him between the bladed sides. The score ticks up North’s count by two.

“Oh come on, that wasn’t fair!” he cries.

North chuckles and walks over to the table, clapping Jack’s hand as he raises it in the air. The echo resounds in the room, and Kozmotis takes delight in watching the boy fail to hide his pained cringe and the pitiful shake he gives to his hand to drive away the sting.

“What do you want?” he asks the boy.

“Thought I’d stop by.”

“Because?”

He looks up and shrugs. “I dunno. I just knew you two usually fought at this time. Thought I’d check it out for myself.” He glances up at the scores. “You kinda suck at this, huh?”

North holds Kozmotis back before he can cut Jack, shoving him back into the small arena and raising his swords again. It takes him a moment to collect himself, but Kozmotis focuses on North alone and returns to the match. Several more minutes go by, enough that he hopes Jack will grow bored, as he’s prone to do, and leave. But as the time ticks, the gap between his and North’s scores only widens.

“Seriously, are you okay?” Jack asks before yet another round starts. “I was only joking earlier, but you honestly suck at this right now.”

“Leave Kozmotis alone. He is busy ignoring his problems,” North replies, lunging forward.

“I am—” Kozmotis dodges back just in time. “I am not!”

“Is it Sandy?” Jack asks.

Kozmotis grunts and ignores him.

“Your daughter?”

He manages catch North’s side. But he doesn’t look at the score. Better to keep his optimism and focus up.

“It’s not your S.O. is it?”

Kozmotis whips around again, remembering too late that he’s in the middle of a sword fight. He frantically holds his rapier up to guard, but North hovers his blade an inch from his face. He quirks an eyebrow, silently asking the same thing as Jack. Kozmotis pushes the cutlass away and backs up.

“They’re not telling me something,” he finally growls, circling the other man.

“Who is? Be exact,” North says.

Kozmotis lets the name of his spirit drip from his mouth in a frustrated whisper so furious that he stops in his tracks. He straightens up, sword falling to his side and shakes his head.

“I’m trying not to get too angry, but I cannot even get them to let me know what’s on their mind. I know it’s bothering them, though.”

“Mmhm…”

North lunges. He jerks backwards to quickly guard. Their swords clash with a loud _tang,_ and the both of them pause and shake out their arms from the impact.

“Truthfully,” North says, “I want them to take as much time as possible to reach new solution about magic, belief, and spires. They seem excited to have new work to focus on.”

“Dude! Have they shown you what the Pole ice looks like microscopically?” Jack hovers on a cold wind until he’s over North’s shoulder. “Like, I knew ice had crystals in it, but the stuff around here—and mine—looks so cool!”

“I will have to ask them to show me.” North gestures to Kozmotis. “Have you seen your power under microscope?”

“No.” He glances at Jack, who settles back onto the table, wondering why this twerp was in line ahead of him for such a thing. “They’ve either asked me to steer clear of the lab, or the fairy and goose girl pack in there so tightly I can’t enter.”

North stops his movements, letting Kozmotis touch the tip of his sword to the man’s chest.

“What are their names?”

He rolls his eyes. “Toothiana and Katherine. I know. But they don’t like me, so why bother with niceties?”

“Whatever, man," Jack says, floating back to the table. "Just don’t insult my friends like that in front of me.”

There’s an electric-blue shimmer just under his vision, and Kozmotis has to choose between losing another point or faceplanting on a patch of ice. North’s score ticks up.

Kozmotis storms over to Jack, wrenching himself out of North’s hold when he tries to grab him. The boy meets his glare, impassive, though he does draw his staff just a bit closer to him. North is saying something in a warning tone of voice, but all Kozmtis does is lift his sword and tap it against the staff.

“Your turn.”

Jack bursts out laughing. “Heck no!”

“Why not? I know you can fight.” He backs up a bit—still close enough to crowd Jack, but not far enough to make an escape easy.

“Yeah, this isn’t the sort of staff you use in karate or whatever.” He flares it a bit. “I don’t do the physical fighting thing.”

Kozmotis summons a web of threads to his hand. “I’ll meet you halfway.”

Jack looks past him, then drags his glare back. He tosses a few things from his pockets aside and floats into the air. Kozmotis is seconds from trying to play off his pride when Jack touches one hand to the ceiling and drops. In another second, a wave of icy air billows out from the epicenter of the ice spirit as he catches himself before hitting the ground.

“You’re on,” he says, rising higher and higher again. “But I’m gonna fly.”

“All right then, gentlemen, let’s make this a good, clea—” North settles back. “Mmm… Just make it worthwhile fight. And don’t destroy my home.”

He snaps, and the board clears.

They both move at the same time, Jack looping high into the air and Kozmotis tracking him from the center of the arena. He lets the warm strings hang from his hands, waving in the air, but not giving them the direction to weave themselves into anything just yet. Jack zooms in circles for a minute, streaks of ice creating a shimmering wall around the edge of the circle, obscuring him just enough that Kozmotis loses sight of him. He hears the ebb and flow of the whooshing as the boy continues to spin round and round. But the sound finally slows.

There’s a moment of silence, and then a chorus of creaking ice erupts behind him, along with a sudden vacuum that sucks in all the comfortable warmth. He flings himself to the side. Ice lands where he was, forming into spike almost as tall as he is. He commands the threads to spin together and flings them in the direction of the flash of blue light the ice had come from.

Jack cries out in surprise, and a segment of the threads snag on something for a moment before snapping.

“Come on out, Jack! Fight me for real!”

Blue zaps down in front of him, and he leaps backward. Another zap, behind him, and he’s sandwiched between two ice ridges that spring up. Kozmotis darts between them before he can be truly trapped, still trying to keep track of Jack and make sure they’re facing when his mist fades completely.

He hears the next blast, but doesn’t quite register it as above him until large icicles embed themselves around him in the floor. Bars of a cage.

“I said do _not_ destroy my home!” North screams somewhere.

The haze dissipates, and Kozmotis finally sees Jack on the ground to his left, shaking himself loose. His face is flushed, and he’s worked up a sweat. He leans on his staff, rubbing his eyes. The dark circles under them seem even larger as he does.

Kozmotis whips the strings around the nearest icicle, clenching his fist and yanking. The ice cracks and breaks away in chunks. He sends out a few more around the same one, and with a few more pulls, it crumbles. He hops over the ice chunks and tosses more of the strings to Jack, latching on to his wrist and ankle and dragging him down to his side.

“Augh!” He shakes his head and chokes up on his staff, tucking the rest under his arm. His eyes dart back and forth over several points, and he puffs air in and out of his lungs.

Kozmotis advances, collecting the strings to keep them taut, and sends other to get a hold on his other hand. Closer, closer, running the strings and locking limbs into place. It’s taking a toll on him; the magic is still so new that he hasn’t learned how to move with it, and the inexperience is making his own breathing difficult. A few more steps, and he sways above Jack, who looks up at him. He holds out his sword and points at him.

“How’s that?”

Jack grins and takes a deep breath. Before Kozmotis can suss him out, trails of swirling frost zip across the floor and surround him, then close in. The frost turns into rime, turns into a layer of ice thick enough to bind him in place from the ankles up. And up and up. In almost no time, Jack’s pushed the ice around his torso and nearly encased the elbow on his sword arm.

Then his staff starts charging up.

Kozmotis twists the sword in the hopes to block as much as possible while also summoning piles and piles of silver in front of him, half of it weaving a barrier in front of him, the other half trying to reach out and still hold Jack. They both have less than three seconds, and then the magic discharges.

Kozmotis flies backwards, slamming into one of the still-intact icicles. He coughs, dragging the wind back into him. Across the way, as the residue haze of the explosion disappears, Jack has a wind drag his shaking body up from the floor. It deposits him on his feet, but he leans even more heavily onto his staff as he hobbles back across the way, staring him down. Kozmotis peels himself off the icicle, knees shaking from cold and exhaustion, and he starts for the boy. He digs deep, reaching for the silver tethers. One appears in his grasp, falters, then disappears.

They don’t get ten feet from each other before North steps between them, holding his arms out. Jack tries to sidestep them, but North grabs his shoulder. Kozmotis chuckles, and abruptly stops as North rolls the manacle control crystal between his fingers like a coin trick.

“There’s no need for that,” he whispers.

“Both of you are done.”

He gestures up around the room. The beginnings of water stains seep into the carved wood and the floor cracks and dips under the weight of the icicles. But he says nothing else and just leads them over to seats where they catch their breaths.

“Feel better?” Jack asks after a second. His eyes are closed, but his head tilts toward Kozmotis, who takes a deep breath.

“No.”

“For real, what happened with your partner and you?”

“They’re affectionate enough when we’re together.” Jack gags. Kozmotis tries to kick his chair, but can’t muster up the energy. “They’re not unhappy as far as I can tell… But they’re quieter than usual.”

“They’re just quiet. Unless they talk about science or aliens. Then there’s no shutting them up.”

Kozmotis laughs. “True.”

“So if spirit is not shy about speaking when it interests them…” North places a thermos in the center of the table between them. The table is longer than it looks, and as Jack blindly reaches out for it, the container is just out of reach of his fingertips. He groans, turns, and drags it closer with the crook of his staff. “Then what is wrong?”

“I want to help them!” Kozmotis cries out. “I’ve talked to them, I’ve reassured them they can tell me about anything and I won’t judge. I just—!”

“Do you love them?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do they love you?”

“They’ve said as much.”

“And you believe them?”

“Yes!”

Kozmotis tries to leap to his feet, but only succeeds in upsetting the mug North had set down for him. He scrambles for it, but it slips past his fingers. It rolls off the side and shatters in the nearest puddle. Kozmotis collapses against the table, head thunking against the wood. North sets something else in the middle of the table, and after a few seconds, the sound of a blade sharpening against stone becomes soothing background noise.

“So, what are you afraid of, hm?” North presses. Kozmotis turns and glares at him. “What about spirit is scaring you so badly?”

“I’m not afraid of—”

“Liar.”

The old man suddenly turns into the young, brash Cossack thief he first met centuries ago. No fear of looking him right in the eye and jabbing into his core without overture. Irritation disguising itself as patient and calm determination. A not-so-veiled threat of violence as he runs a sword over a sharpening stone while still looking directly at him, waiting for an answer. Kozmotis lets the question settle within himself for a few more minutes, listening to the soft scraping, ignoring when Jack leans back in his chair to see around North, sipping loudly.

“Twice now,” Kozmotis finally says. North nods. “Twice now, a Nightmare Man has donned my face to abuse my love. To threaten them, cage them, traumatize them! And the last thing I want—that I’ve ever wanted—is for them to be afraid of me.”

North makes a few more passes, wipes the sword clean, and finally puts it away.

“Seems to me,” he says slowly, “that they are simply not ready to talk to you about problem, if that is issue they’re having. Maybe they will talk to someone else and gather thoughts before finally saying.”

“Katherine’s been saying they’re talking with her and Tooth about stuff,” Jack says. “None of them will tell me what it’s about, but they’re talking.”

“But I want them to be able to tell _me_ anything. _I_ want to know everything going through their head. Especially now that I can’t just tell when they’re upset or what they’re generally feeling anymore.”

North walks over to him and slaps his hand on his shoulder. Kozmotis bites back a grunt of pain.

“That does not mean they are ready to tell, or that you are right person to talk to first.”

After a few more minutes rest, North then spends two hours watching him and Jack clean up the mess as he dips into the spiked eggnog. The once-simple storage area is outfitted for their frequent matches. It could also pass for a decent armory, what with all the different styles of swords, clubs, and staffs decorating the walls. Kozmotis hasn’t dared ask if they’re all functional or mere decoration, but he imagines they could be, at the very least, useful enough if in dire need. Once finished, Jack flings himself out the window and flies off to be a nuisance elsewhere. Kozmotis follows North back into the workshop.

“When did you get so wise?” he says once they’re walking side by side.

“When I got fat.” The Cossack pats his middle, and his eyes sparkle.

“Ah,” Kozmotis replies. “Wisdom is stored in the belly, is it? Could have sworn it was in the teeth.”

“Invite Tooth to next match and see if she will confirm.”

“I think she might actually run me through instead.”

North shrugs and heads off as a yeti matches his pace and pulls him off to the side, ruffling a packet of papers. They mutter in the yetis’ language and leave Kozmotis to mull over his frustration and North’s words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk follow me on [tumblr?](https://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com/)


	61. Proof of Results

It’s been awhile since you’ve done this. You place your notes and some substances down on the table, avoiding everyone’s eyes. This isn’t your first time at the planning table, but usually you’re sitting down and watching someone else talk. Much like your previous job, however, it was inevitable that they’d ask you to present your findings.

You clear your throat, still not looking at them, and fiddle with your props until they’re arranged in a way that looks like you know what you’re doing. But you can feel the blush working its way across your face the longer you delay.

 _They’re not going to hurt me,_ you say to yourself. _We’re here to learn and figure out the next steps so we can fight the shadows back._

You look up, right into the unreadable faces of Katherine and Bunny. Well, his face is a little more readable, and he’s less than pleased with the turn of events. If the fearlings were being more blatant with their plans, or if they were contained, there’s no way he’d keep allowing you to help guard the Source. You glance at one of the glowing vials. Or to get near enough to it to take a sample and some notes.

The rest of the Guardians lean in, waiting for you to start. Jack’s still glued to the phone he found at some point. You had to explain to him that just because he tries to make himself go viral doesn’t mean it’ll take. He keeps trying, though, bless his heart. Toothiana watches Bunny and Katherine for a second, scratching out notes for her fairies whenever another tooth pings in her mind. North sits with his hands clasped next to Sandy.

You blink, realizing someone’s missing.

A gentle hand presses to your back, and Kozmotis offers you a cup of water. He hugs you for a moment and kisses your temple, taking the opportunity to say in your ear, “You’re going to do fine. It’s just like when you gave your lectures to me in the forest.”

“To be fair, I couldn’t see you very well,” you murmur in reply. “That’s what made it easy.”

He squeezes you again and takes his place as well, settling in between North and Jack. You take a quick sip of the water. It is ice cold, making your throat tighten as you swallow. But there’s something else at the edge of it, something you can’t taste so much as you feel wrapping within you. It distracts you from the stage fright enough that you can focus, and you force yourself to make a mental note to look into it later.

“So,” you begin, grabbing one of the vials to keep your hands busy. And also to keep them from seeing you shake. “With the spire samples I now have, I think I can distill and isolate the properties within them. And I’m on the cusp of seeing why they read as belief on the globe, even as they read as crushing fear when you get near them.

“I, uh, also recently got a hold of some readings from the Source of Spring. Thanks, Bunny,” you add, nodding his direction.

Kozmotis leans in a bit; Bunny continues to stare blankly at you, though his ear flicks his direction for a moment. You take another sip of water and whatever magic rests in the liquid—because it has to be magic. Is this Pole ice water? You wonder—it perks you up again. It’s been a whirlwind over the last few days. You suddenly reach down and thumb through your notes. The ones you took on the Source are smudged from where the ink hadn’t dried from earlier today.

“From the brief look I’ve given it, it seems like the Source lines up, obviously, with the resonant readings I’ve gotten from Bunny’s flowers and eggshells. They’re not quite the same, but the most basic form of magic I’ve been able to see lines up with what the Source radiates, indicating it’s from the same… source.”

“Meaning?” Bunny asks. His leg bounces rapidly, a muffled drumbeat against the hardwood floors.

“Well, if the Source is some of the purest form of magic, then everything derived from it would have similar markings and makeups. Meaning that the essence of all magic is contained within the similarities of all of the Sources.” You pause for a moment. “There _are_ other Sources, right? I kind of assumed there’d be one for every season.”

They all nod.

“The Sources are well-hidden in the planet, though,” Bunny says. “Spring is the most exposed cause I live next to it and my tunnels lead to it. Only other one I’ve seen is Summer.”

“Where is it?”

“A desert in North Africa.” He squints his eyes for a second. “Can’t remember what the country’s called nowadays.” He shrugs. “Why d’you need to know?”

“Because I want samples from them, too.”

“Shouldn’t we be focused on figuring out the spires?” Toothiana says. “That way you can figure out how to defeat the shadows for good.”

“Well… yes, but no,” you reply. “I think getting samples of the most, if you will, primordial forms of magic will help me better understand what I’m even trying to look for. Especially if I can compare that magic to the spires. Because…” You shrink a little. “Because I don’t really know what I’m doing, yet.”

“Than why are we wastin’ time? Easter is too soon for non-concrete plans!”

Bunny shoves himself away from the table, and before anyone can say anything, he opens a tunnel. Before he can disappear, however, a mass of silver strings wraps around his arm and drags him back. He whirls, drawing a boomerang, locking his sights on Kozmotis, who’s standing and leaning over the table.

“Let. Go. Of. Me,” Bunny whispers.

“Hear them out before you take off in a useless rage,” Kozmotis replies, on the verge of growling. But he does release the threads.

“It might not hurt to learn as much as we are able.” North rises from his seat, shoving Kozmotis back down. He wanders over to Bunny, and encourages him to rejoin the table. “Both spires and Sources are mysteries we could uncover at same time.”

“Easter—”

“Will happen regardless of whether we are ready.” He looks up at you. “But short-term plan would be of help, too.”

You sigh. “If that’s the case, then I need a sample of another Source first. Just for comparison’s sake to see if they’re all the same. And then another spire sample. You said the Antarctica one was built into an existing structure, right, Jack?” He nods. “I won't really be able to discover what _exactly_ it is without knowing what the Sources are, too, though. But in terms of shorter-term solutions, given it’s shadows we're dealing with, I’m guessing light and/or the dreamsand will affect them most.”

You glance toward Sandy. He perks up at the attention and clears his throat.

“Perhaps,” he replies. “If you let me know what you need, I could stop by and have you amplify a little more sand for protection.”

“I could gather some more materials from my archives,” Katherine says. “That book I lent you isn’t the only one my father wrote, so there might be more information deep in his other tomes. Or the ones he gathered over the centuries."

“I’d appreciate that. Thanks.” You grip the vial in your hands. They’re a little clammy. You take the last gulp of magic-laced water, and despite it sitting out for a bit, it’s still cold enough to instantly numb your mouth. You shuffle a few more papers around. “Oh! I just remembered. Since you showed me how the globe calculates and shows belief in areas, I was able to cross-reference that with all of my samples and notes, and the closest thing that came to it was the Source. Which, I guess makes sense if it’s a pure form of magic—both Spring and belief.

“But that’s why I want to get samples from the other Sources. I’ve started recognizing belief when I come across it with regards to magic, but I just need to know what really connects the two, or if one makes up the other, or if they simultaneously exist. Does that make sense?"

“No!” Bunny takes a deep breath, and more calmly says, “No, I don’t get it. Mostly I’m a little hung up on why you’re muckin’ about in all this theory when either the greatest boon or bust to belief is days away. And I’m a little hurt my livelihood and purpose seems to matter so little to ya.”

Before Kozmotis can open his mouth, you reply, “I’m sorry. I really am, but I’m still so new at this. And I literally can’t make myself explore magic without coming at it from the perspective of the scientific method. It’s just how I understand things, and science tends to be slow to get real breakthroughs.

“But I _will_ help you fight and toss eggs out and whatever you need me to do in the short term.”

He rubs his face and then his expression cracks open. His eyes swim and he shakes and leans against the table like he’s too heavy to keep himself upright.

“I appreciate the words. But I am so tired of not havin’ anythin’ concrete to go off of. It’s bad enough I’m targeted twice in less than a century, but hearin’ my whole reason for continuing to exist talked about like it’s optional is too much. Tell me what the _point_ of your little science experiments are, how they’re gonna _help_ me, and why _I_ should care.”

Toothiana leans in, folded hands over her mouth as she darts her eyes between him and you. They don’t have a familiar, friendly gleam to them anymore. The tooth boxes are still resting within the other bases, out of her grasp, out of her sight, not where they’re supposed to be anymore. All at the expense of older kids who had no chance to believe or disbelieve of their own volition.

You pick up the bottle glowing with the light of Spring, turning it in your hands for a second. This isn’t your only sample, but it’s one of the last two that remain untouched. You unscrew the lid and lift it just enough to poke the tip of your finger inside and wipe off a bit of your magic into the green. The two contrasting magics swirl around, and it almost looks like it refuses to mix like it does instantly with anyone else’s power. But slowly, the iridescence dilutes and dissipates into the Spring, leaving only pale flashes of the oil slick rainbows you put in there. You hand the bottle to Bunny.

“Take a whiff.” You wipe your hands off and clutch your cloak.

Bunny hesitates for a moment, then uncaps the bottle and brings it under his nose. He takes a long sniff.

“Just a small one!” you say quickly.

His glares at you, eyes widening in concern. He quickly shuts the cap and starts to speak when a look passes over his face. He stops, staring down at the table. He brings up one arm, half-standing, half-leaning. You move over to him and try to lift the bottle out of his hand, but his grip tightens, and his claws scrap against the glass with a terrible grating sound.

He stands, eyes glowing a flickering green, much like they had the day he showed you the Source. You back up. He follows your movement. You keep going, and he just advances, blinking continuously.

“Stop,” Kozmotis says to the side.

You hear another chair push out from the table. You stand your ground, not looking directly at Bunny, just waiting for him to calm down. It never lasted much longer than this for you. Then again, he had inhaled a lot more than you anticipated he would, much more than you had this morning. Kozmotis wraps his hands around your shoulders and drags you against himself. Silver flares up in your peripheral vision.

Bunny finally stops in place, letting his ears twitch all around for a second until he reaches up and covers them, dragging them down around his face and cringing.

“Ugh…”

He stumbles for a second before catching himself. You wince in sympathy; your migraine was bad enough. You can’t imagine his. His voice gurgles as he tries to speak, and he licks his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times. The cottonmouth had been annoying, too.

He coughs out, “What the heck is this?"

He stumbles forward another step, Toothiana flying over to steady him. Kozmotis pulls you back farther, clinging to your waist.

“If my power can amplify something to a higher potency, like the dreamsand,” you say slowly, “then it stood to reason I could do the same with Spring.”

“I felt like I could do anything for a minute.”

“You probably could’ve.”

“What is it? What happened?”

“Well, if the Source of Spring is the purest, most undiluted form of hope, then this is an amplified version of that. The closest I could get to naming it was ‘determination.’”

He licks around his mouth for a second, coughing again and pushing his thumb into a single spot above his right eye. The glow in his eyes has faded back to their normal vibrancy. He looks at the bottle in his hand, then to you. He holds up the bottle and nods a few times before stopping squeezing his eyes shut against the headache he must have.

“Is it possible to bottle more of this? If I keep it up, I bet I could tear through fearlings before they even know what hit ‘em. Felt like I could take on a whole Nightmare Man. Or that eldritch thing.”

You shift a bit and take a deep breath. _He doesn’t know what you know. He doesn’t know what you know…_ you remind yourself. You start to regret sharing the finding, but at the very least you can offer guidance about it.

“It’s like a stimulant drug. Or maybe anabolic steroids. Or maybe meth. I honestly just kind of discovered it earlier today, so I haven’t tested it much. I just know it has a high and a low period. And while it might be useful in a pinch, I don’t think we should rely on it to take out the shadows.” You gesture to him in general. “Seeing as how the low is physically painful, it wouldn’t be very good if you suddenly dropped in the middle of battle.

“My point in showing you this—” You grab the bottle in his paw. He refuses to let go for a second, but you pry it from his grasp. “Was to let you know that I _can_ get results. Useful results. And if this is what I can get from just one Source, who knows what I could do if I played around with the rest.”

The Guardians are all silent, looking on carefully. Tooth goes back to hunching over, staring at the bottle in your hands, eyes sharper than before. This is so unlike the meeting back in your life. Back when you were able to report to your bosses that you’d found a workaround using old stock that they could repackage and not have to declare a total loss. That meeting had the rush of validation and approval attached to it. Applause, cheers, thoughtful looks from your superiors. This is just silence and caution.

 _Good,_ you say to yourself. _I could have used that hesitation years ago._

“But,” you continue, “if you want a way to possibly undo the shadow damage by Easter or right after, then I really need to play around with the Source samples. Preferably of at least one more different kind, just to be safe and cross-reference what I’m trying to figure out. So we can maybe redirect the damage back into healing.”

Bunny nods, still looking at the bottle. He gently shakes his head again and sits back down at the table. North clears his throat and takes up the speech. You sit down. Kozmotis stands behind you, gently lacing his hand through yours and rubbing your shoulder.

As you stare at the glowing bottle in your hands, you really start to wonder again where the lines are drawn between mistake and breakthrough. It’s so thin, you feel like you’re going to cut yourself. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! scream into the void with a comment or just poke me on [tumblr](https://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	62. Trust and Want Collide

Kozmotis looks up from where he’s sucking a mark into the spirit’s chest and sees them looking into the distance, lost in thought yet again. They run their fingers through his hair absently, humming every now and then. He leans down and gives another hard bite to the same spot. They tense up, hiss, and grasp his hair tighter. He crawls up to them, and holds himself over their body. They shake their head and focus on him.

“Something’s bothering you,” he says.

They shrug. “Yeah, there is. And it’s very complicated and I’m not sure where to start processing it.”

He licks his lips. “Is it about the Nightmare Man and it impersonating me?”

“No…” They blink for a moment. “I actually hadn’t given that much thought.”

Kozmotis leans back and drags them up until they’re sitting cross-legged on the bed. He kneels beside them, leaning his shoulder into them. They reach out and wrap their arm around his shoulders.

“Now that you bring it up, I’m surprised I’m not more hung up on that point. Kinda wish I was…”

He cringes, and when his spirit looks at him, they startle and backpedal.

“No, I mean… I just mean that what I’m thinking about is more personal than that? Though considering my head issue—” They reach up and run their fingers through the hair on the back of their head. “Yeah, there’s something that’s bothering me way more than that.”

Kozmotis sighs in selfish relief. He doesn’t suppose suppressing their fear over whatever the Nightmare Man did to them is much better, but at least they’re not afraid of him. For the moment. Hopefully never. He draws up one of their hands and nuzzles into it, licking his way across their fingers. They grunt and shiver, though they bite their lip to try and stifle their widening smile and heavier breathing. After laving his tongue up and down each digit, he laces their fingers together and holds the back of their hand to his cheek.

“I know you’re frustrated with me, and I’m sorry.” They look at him. “You haven’t had luck with your thing, have you? With Sandy?”

He opens his mouth, but then closes it again, leaning over to the spirit and taking a nip at their ear. They lean into the touch and he whispers, “Don’t change the subject just yet.”

The spirit groans and lays back onto the pillow. He joins them, wrapping an arm over their middle. They lay nose to nose, and they take his face in their hands to kiss his nose.

“I admit, that was a good try, darling. But go ahead and put a pin in my problems for now.”

“I just feel like I can’t grab control over this thing, even thought I want to,” they reply. “It’s frustrating.”

“I can understand that,” Kozmotis replies. He takes a deep breath. “And if you’ll trust me—even if you’re not ready to have whatever discussion we need to eventually—If you’ll trust me, perhaps I can grant you the semblance of control. Just for a bit.”

They raise an eyebrow at that. He slinks off the bed and crosses over to the drawer he stashed it in. He slips it out, hiding it as best he can in his fingers. The spirit sits up and scooches so that their legs hang off the edge of the bed.

_Perfect._

Kozmotis kneels before the bed, kissing their calf. He forces himself to make eye contact, hoping that this is either what they want, need, or both. His spirit raises an eyebrow at him, carding their fingers through his hair and tracing their cold toes in circles on his back. He feels the flush spread all over his body.

“It’s funny that you mention wanting control,” he starts, still keeping his gaze glued to theirs. They lean towards him a bit. He grasps one of their hands and deposits what he’s holding into it. They hold it up to look at it, and he rests his chin on the mattress, still kneeling before them, still watching them. His breath quickens as they open their palm.

“Koz,” they say slowly. “Is this one of the control crystals? For your cuffs?”

“Yes,” he breathes out, shaking. “I, uh… North is disturbingly understanding.”

They look from him to the crystal. He can’t read their subdued expressions as they chew on their lip and contemplate the stone in their hand. They get another faraway look, and he’s afraid he jumped too far ahead.

“We don’t have to do this right now, but I have, hopefully, made it clear in the past that such a turn of events, so to speak, is something I am more than willing to explore—”

The spirit locks eyes with him again and closes their hand over the crystal. For a second, nothing happens, and then a glow peeks through their fingers. The magical chains rapidly extend out from each wrist and his neck, dragging his arms up until they’re once again just below his chin, unable to move.

“It’s been awhile since I did anything like this,” the spirit murmurs, leaning down and running their finger over the cuffs and down the short chain to the collar. They drag their finger up the side of his face, tracing the shell of his ear, his cheekbone, to his nose, where they leave a small tap and say, “Boop.”

He chuckles a bit, still trying to keep his breathing even. The spirit sets both their feet down on the floor, framing him between them. They lean down and hook a finger under the collar, making him stand on his knees and lean up toward them. They squeeze their knees around his shoulders.

“And you’ll be using the same word?”

“Locket.”

“Right.”

They’re flushing as well, looking the least bit nervous. But to him, right now, it can’t have been too long since they were in charge like this. At the very least, they know the right steps in their exquisite order. He gulps. They tug a little higher, and he arches, trying to reach their lips if they’ll let him.

“And what game are you wanting to play today?” they whisper, barely two inches away from brushing their mouth to his, a gruff edge at their voice. He doesn’t think he can flush any hotter than he is now without combusting on the spot. The spirit sneaks their other hand down to his chest. “A general too tired from his most recent deployment? A spirit abandoned by his element?” His breath hitches and he doesn’t know how to answer.

He manage to focus on their face, their brilliant eyes. Their pupils nearly encompass their entire iris in lust. They’re blushing just as much as he is, and though the spark of nervousness lingers, they rove their eyes over him in a way that makes him feel naked, exposed, alone. Alone except for the interested and mildly predatory hunger that keeps flitting across their beautiful features.

“Well?”

“I am but a humble servant wishing to please you,” he chokes out.

They lean down and brush their lips against the shell of his ear, darting their tongue out to trace the ridges until they get to his earlobe, where they suck and rake their teeth over it. He moans their name and pants against their neck, kissing wherever he can reach.

As soon as his lips make contact, they pull away, shifting farther back onto the bed, but not letting go of the collar. They lean down on their knees, looking down at him like a spider tugging the webstrings surrounding their prey. He slowly rises and places himself on the bed before them. They smile for a second, nearly dropping the act, before running their fingers through his hair and gently lapping at his gaping mouth. He grants them entrance immediately, closing his eyes and savoring the feeling of them roving their tongue over every corner they can reach. He sucks gently on it, hoping to encourage them into allowing him elsewhere. They moan so low it tapers into a growl.

“Just a humble servant, hm?” they say, lifting away from him.

He tries to chase, but they drag their fingers through his hair, pulling back so that he cannot move. His chest heaves in and out at the sensation, remembering the echo of a similar instance not too many days before. They look him up and down, and then continue to pull him along the length of the bed until they’re sitting up against the headboard and he’s hunching and kneeling over between their spread legs. He tries to glance over every inch of their being, but their grip trains his head up to meet their gaze again. They lift their other hand and a glow seeps out. The bindings let go. The spirit’s hand in his hair does not.

“If you’re here to serve me and my needs…” He nods, wide-eyed. They jerk him forward a bit and hook their knee over his shoulder. “Get to work.”

He swears his life’s pulse dies completely the moment they trap him in their leg. He had hoped. He had been on the verge of praying. Ever since their first time in the forest at dawn, he had never forgotten the twitches of their thighs pressing either side of his head, yanking him closer, ever desperate. He kisses their leg and crawls forward, placing another a few inches farther up. Another to the opposite leg, daring to leave a lick behind it.

Finally, he settles himself at their core. He dares meet their gaze, almost losing himself as he finds them panting, flushed, and twitching. He gazes as long as they let him, until they grin wolfishly and force his head down.

The first lick against them is tentative, searching. He’s no stranger to them, of course, but the context is slightly different. Though he always strives to please them, now he must. Now he is under the heavy scrutiny of a new master, one who, according to their intense gaze, is judging his every action, ranking how well he can pleasure them.

His second lick to their clit makes their whole body tense, and they dig their heel into the space between his shoulder blades. He continues, losing track of the time as he wraps himself only in them and his task. His tongue trails up and down, occasionally sneaking back to their thighs to taste them and feel their muscles tense and relax, to feel them shiver and tremble. And then he dives back in to lap at their folds. 

He hears them hiss somewhere above him, and he glances up to them. They’re clutching their breast, pinching their nipple as they stare at him. They lock eyes, and goodness, they’re still so bright and piercing, even clouded over like this. They catch him watching, and he realizes he’s paused his attentions to where they directed him. He starts to head back, laying another soft kiss to their leg, when their grip tightens around his chin.

Their leg still pushes him against the bed, pinning him and trapping his hardening cock from rising where it may. It almost hurts, and what little movement he’s being allowed cannot drag out enough pressure to relive it.

But they direct his face—lips, tongue, and chin slick with their wetness and his saliva—up to where he can see them push their chest out, massaging it back and forth.

“Look,” they whisper, clutching themself. “You’re so wonderful already that I can’t help myself. I want…” They swing their other leg over his shoulders. “…more. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” he whispers hoarsely in reply. They tap their thumb over his mouth.

“Shh… Show me.”

His lower half jerks along the covers and he redoubles his efforts. He swirls his tongue over them again and again, taking them in and sucking at the nub between their legs, trying to find a subtle rhythm of dragging his own pelvis against the sheets because every time they moan and whimper, it only encourages him.

So many of their previous trysts have been clawing and desperate. A means to fill the time with passion and ecstasy before they must part yet again. Not this time. The Guardians have been willing to steer clear so far, even if he’s overheard them grumbling to North. Given that it’s his home, there’s not much they can really do about it. Things have changed for them. Changed so wonderfully that he wouldn’t give this up for the world.

He dips his tongue within them, grinding his face against them to take them in. He doesn’t realize that his nails dig into their ass until the spirit grunts and lifts themself away from him. His heart quickens, and he glances up, only having a moment to comprehend the glow in their clenched, shaking fist before he’s bound again. He makes a startled strangle, and they take the opportunity to wrap their ankles together, pressing even tighter around his head. He’s going to go dizzy at this rate.

The spirit chides him. _“You’re_ not in charge here,” they say, splaying themself out among the pillows. _“You_ don’t get to be rough.”

They reach down again and push him as close to them as he can get, and he lets out the most embarrassing, pitiful moan he’s ever mustered. And he throws himself back into laving his tongue across them. He can’t look up to watch them, but he hears them. Moaning, “Yes!” over and over again. Huffing and heaving, They rock against him for a long while, quickly then slowly, fucking themself on his tongue and the pressure he pushes against them. Their thighs crush tighter and tighter the closer they get, and their words become barely recognizable gasps rather than coherent language.

Whenever he thinks he can get away with it, he shifts his lower half along the bed. Increment by increment, he feels himself harden, both due to the cautious friction and the pride he takes in knowing all of these noises are him. Despite giving up control, he is still responsible for his spirit losing themself to rapture. It’s all he can ask for.

Finally, they pull against him, making him stop moving altogether as they grind themself against his tongue again and again and again until a loud cry flies from their mouth. There’s a moment where his spirit’s body becomes taut as their drawn bowstring, and then the tension slides out of them. He still presses into them, using what little movement he has to grasp their rear and continue to take them through their orgasm.

They lean back, legs going limp as they twitch and come down from the high. Slowly, their feet start to rub gentle circles on his back, contrasting the bruising pressure of their heels. After another few minutes of soft groans and back rubs—still, he tries to subtly work himself, but it is not nearly enough—they hiss from overstimulation and drag away from his grasp.

He gulps down the fresh air, slightly lost after so long with one thing in front of him to occupy his mind. He lays there, hands clasped, and watches them.

The spirit takes a deep breath and turns onto their knees in front of him. He starts to scramble to get up, but can’t due to his hands being bound. They reach down, one hand clasping the short chain and the other grasping around him to help him sit up.

Once he’s situated, he takes in a deep breath and closes his eyes, trying not to focus on his cock straining in his pants and the cold air passing over it. There’s a quick jab of nails at his back, dragging him closer. He opens his eyes again to see the spirit nuzzle into him, gently capturing his mouth again. He relaxes into their hold, and they alternate between rubbing up and down his spine and kneading his ass. They press closer, trapping his dick between their warm bodies.

“That was wonderful,” they purr, not moving more than an inch away from from his mouth. He licks his lips; they’ve gone dry, despite everything. The spirit chuckles and traces a finger over them. He shivers. They hum and say, “You look magnificent like this.”

They run their fingers over his bound hands, zig-zagging between his fingers, down to his elbows, and back up to his shoulders. Before this started, he hadn’t gotten as far with disrobing as they had. His shirt was barely hanging open compared to their complete nakedness. And yet, he cannot help but feel bare as that look of hunger washes over them again. He knows that look, has felt the rush that comes with it when he knows they’re ready to press on, and in.

Feeling them clasp his back tightly and make playful, skimming touches over the cloth, where the feeling is dampened enough that he only barely feel the heat of their skin leaking through… It becomes too much, and though he tries, he cannot stifle the grunt that comes out of him, nor can he hope to disguise the jerk of his hips.

They pause. Their eyes flicker down between their bodies for moment.

“You’ve been quiet,” they say, pressing forward a little more. Gently, they start rhythmically moving their hips along his. “How do you feel? I, for one, feel wonderful.” They kiss his knuckles. “Not bad for your first attempt.”

_First, first,_ is the only word echoing around his head. His whole body flushes again as the spirit turns his face up to theirs. They wait. After a few more moments of silence, they stop moving. He clears his throat.

“Th-thank you,” he says. “I exist to please.”

“Is that all?” they reply, starting again. He groans and starts to lean, resting his head against their shoulder. “You exist for nothing else?”

He shakes his head, wondering what they’re getting at. They hum again and grind a bit faster.

“I’ve heard a story,” they say, “about a dark king in a distant land. His consort wanted nothing more than to please him. But he made them work desperately for it. Made them earn it so. Achingly. Slowly.”

They whisper next to his ear, the hot breath ghosting over it again and again, tickling the lines they lick into it. Then the first nip comes.

“Ah!” His hips stutter and his fingers flex involuntarily, trying to grasp anything he can. But they cannot find purchase. The spirit chuckles.

“Something happened to this king, though. It’s as if he was taken elsewhere, never to be seen in that kingdom ever again.”

Kozmotis makes a few experimental grinds against them. They give an encouraging, “Mmhmng,” and he keeps to the rhythm they started.

“But we both know what happened to him.” The spirit forces his face up, and the deliberate, thorough, glaring eye contact has him whimpering. “Don’t we… your majesty?”

He cannot keep their name from passing his lips any longer. Nor can he help himself from thrusting up to catch that wonderful friction, to feel himself against them yet again.

“Please…” he begs. “Please help me. Please. I can’t—I need—”

“Holy shit,” the spirit whispers, aura of authority vanishing.

They get off-rhythm for a second. But only for a moment. The next thing Kozmotis knows, they’re tugging his head to the side and licking up and down over his scar. And then they bite.

“Ahh!”

They latch on, surely leaving a mark or two before sucking his skin and grinding down over and over again. Every time they move away from him, he feels the cool sensation of a wet patch along the front of his pants. He cannot tell if it’s from their slick folds or his precome.

“Please—” They cough slightly and have to catch their breath. “Please what? Tell me.”

“I need…”

“Need what?” They raise themself off him, stopping all friction. _“Need what?”_

“You. Please, please, let me enter you.”

They grin. There’s a moment of shuffling as the spirit leans him away and reaches between them, shoving his pants down and dragging his cock into the open. They line themself up, giving him a gentle squeeze, and then hover. He can feel their thighs quivering.

“Please,” he repeats, voice husky. “Please allow me to feel you around me. _Please!”_

The spirit presses down. Slowly. Too slowly. He needs more or else he’ll burst where he sits. They finally lower themself fully, him sheathed wondrously within their tight heat. It’s not going to take much more, he realizes. Nevertheless, he cants his hips into theirs, groaning and scrabbling yet again to hold onto something with his bound hands.

The spirit returns to his neck and shoulders, wrapping their arms around him as they move. There’s a sudden warmth from the hand clenching and digging nails into his back, and then he finds his wrists free again. Instantly, he attaches them to the spirit’s waist and tears prick the corners of his eyes as he grinds and thrusts deep, every motion making him gasp and grunt, every flicker of their tongue and teeth against him a reminder of where he remains.

It really doesn’t take long. After mere minutes of struggle, his spirit places their open mouth to his, exchanging hot breaths as they both gasp and moan. And they look at him, they see him, and he comes with a haggard scream.

He has to lean against them as his orgasm takes its toll. They hold him, though, brushing their fingers through his hair and whispering, “Oh god. Holy shit. Fuck, oh my god, you’re beautiful.” against his ear. The exhaustion comes not long after he does, and he cannot hold himself upright. As gently as they can, they lower him onto the bed, where he stretches out on his back, trying to even out his breathing. The spirit hovers over him for a moment, wiping the sweat from his eyes and kissing him on every square inch of his face.

They move to his neck, running a finger at the edges of his collar. He takes a sharp inhale as the slight chafing stings. It’ll probably heal overnight, but the spirit still winces in sympathy.

“Are you all right, Koz?” they say quietly, leaning back and reaching for his wrists to inspect them.

He nods. He blinks a few times to refocus his sight, and then moves to sit up. They help him lean against the headboard, and then step away from the bed for a moment. He watches them, heart still pounding furiously, limbs shaking. They pour a glass of water from a pitcher on their night stand, and then kneel next to him. He takes the cup, but his hand is shaking so badly they help him tip it to his lips and sip on the cold liquid.

Pole water, the same as he’d given to them at their presentation. The diluted magic contained within it still affects him, calming him and letting a little bit of strength float back in. The spirit gets up again, and now he can appreciate their glistening body as they reach in for the salve they created specifically for him. He’d told them that treating chafing was hardly worth the trouble on an immortal body, but the next time he saw them, they made him sit down as they massaged it into his wrists and neck. As they do now. The pain does lessen, and he wishes he could just be done with these stupid cuffs once and for all.

_Well…_ he looks up at the spirit as they rub small circles at the edges of the cuffs. _Maybe not totally._

He finishes the glass of water and reaches for their hand. He laces his fingers through theirs and wraps his other arm around their middle. The spirit relents and lays next to him, carding their fingers through his hair and pulling him in for a long, soothing kiss.

“Darling,” he finally says. “That was more than I’ve hoped for. Thank you.”

“Of course,” they reply. Then they nuzzle into his neck. “And thank you.”

“Hm?”

“I do think I needed that. At the very least the intense activity cleared my head a bit.” They laugh. “But I think you rattled almost everything into place.”

He grins to himself and shifts closer to them. Behind the musk of fresh sex, the same leather, earth, and sterile lab scent clings to them, and he drinks it in.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have a happy and safe halloween! join me on [tumblr](https://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	63. The Sandman Knows

The first three hours of your work is quiet. It’s a comfortable silence that stretches out between you and Sandy, who alternates between producing dreamsand and watching you study it. You’re beginning to think the others haven’t ever seen the modern scientific method at work.

“It’s funny,” you suddenly say. “Bunny’s magic is similar enough to Spring’s that I can see the resemblance, but yours and Koz’s are unlike any of the others’ in any way. Except to each other’s.”

He sighs, but says nothing. After about half a minute, you continue.

“Do you think it has anything to do with the fact you’re both aliens?”

He shrugs. The seconds stretch onward until you settle back into the rhythm of weaving your catalytic power through the shining streams of gold. Another twenty minutes slides away in the meantime.

“Are there different Sources out in space? On different planets?”

“Yes,” he replies. The sand stops for a moment. “My home had a Source of Wishes, I suppose you’d translate it. It’s what made us the hub for starcatchers. Wishing energy warmed the whole planet, and several miles outside the atmosphere, too.”

He flicks his fingers, and a small display of golden fireworks burst in sequence. The dust settles in the air into a small orb, and after a moment of concentration, it pushes and pulls into a crude, slowly spinning topographical map. At first glance—once you’ve quieted your internal screaming at seeing an alien planet—you estimate that it’s approximately half water, half land. Most of the land is contained to the lower hemisphere, and as far as you can tell, there’s only two or three supercontinents on the whole globe. Sandy stares at the globe, a smile on his face.

“This is hardly an accurate map, I’m afraid. Just the best I can do from memory.”

He lets the sand fizzle away, and you manage to contain yourself from whining as it goes. You have so many more questions, but the way he lowers himself to the floor makes you wonder if he talks about his home often.

“It’s beautiful regardless,” you say. “Maybe you can see it again one day.”

He nods. “The planet probably still exists, but…”

_But the Golden Age is long gone._

You wonder exactly how old he is, now. Koz is at least fifteen hundred years immortal, and another fifty to sixty on top of that in his life. The Golden Age people didn’t quite age at the same rate that Earthlings do, so the twenty-year-old equivalent could be anywhere from thirty-five to forty. Sandy is small and often seems to have his head in the clouds, so you can’t quite tell if he’s older or younger than that. Not that attitude has to have any determination in age. He’s definitely older than you by several factors.

You lick your lips and carefully say, “Did you leave a lot of people behind when you came here?”

He laughs. “No. I was too shy to make too many friends in the ranks. Starcatching and taming is a solitary business, though. It’s what drew me to it in the first place.”

“Not a people person?”

“They have to be the right kind of people.”

“Well now here you have a whole group of friends.”

He pauses again. “Yes.” He smiles. “Yes, I do.”

There’s never an uncomfortable silence with him, and by extension, very few comfortable conversations. His quiet demeanor is so natural to him, you’d swear he’s forcing his voice to work when he must speak. You continue again for another half hour or so. This time, Sandy breaks the quiet.

“Am I pushing him too hard?” He hides half his face behind clasped hands, leaning against the table and looking off into the distance at the back wall of your lab. “Maybe I’m a nostalgic fool, but he has the potential to be as great as he used to be. But he’s so resistant.”

You swallow a gasping sigh, a reflex of him bringing you both into this topic rather than you struggling one step forward and two steps back over the next few hours. You’ve been trying for the last hour or so to broach the subject of Kozmotis and his memories and family, more specifically, of his daughter.

“He was more resistant a month ago,” you reply. “Now, at least he _wants_ to know more about his past. When you first brought him here, he was casually trying to forget his life in the Golden Age, what little remained with him.”

“But am I pushing too hard?” He looks lost. How in the world can you comprehend this ancient being asking you, _you,_ for help?

You smile. “He’s a little tricky, isn’t he?”

Sandy sighs and fades back into silence, drawing up another stream of dreamsand. Not ten minutes passes, and you shove past the reluctant excuses in your brain yet again.

“What _do_ you know about his daughter?” You meet his eyes. “About Mother Nature?”

He stops completely, and you worry he’s going to dart out the door. But, the Sandman simply chews on his lip and sits on the worktable, leaning his head in one hand, leaning that elbow on his knee. You remember giving looks like that. That’s the contemplating look you always got when you had to talk around your non-disclosure agreements. You let him mull it over as you retrieve a slide with the amplified sand on it, and then take out two others: one with Koz’s silver strings and the other with Bunny’s green ink.

You figure all three of them should look similar, given that the owners of the magic are all aliens. And as you said earlier, Sandy’s and Koz’s have similar resonances, but Bunny’s is completely incompatible. Well, obviously they could mix somehow if you made them; all magic you’ve encountered so far is mixable given enough effort. But Bunny’s resonates almost simultaneously with Spring, despite him not being from this planet. Perhaps he wasn’t magical or didn’t have any magical aptitude before crashing here. Maybe his fight with Pitch Black changed him long before he hit the dirt. You get the feeling that you may never know the answer to that one, as Bunny’s been standoffish towards you ever since the new moon passed. You’re grateful for his help with the Nightmare Man confrontation, but it’s plain that even lukewarm acquaintanceship isn’t in the cards for you at the moment.

“I made a lot of promises back then,” Sandy finally says. “And I’m not about to break them now.”

You muster up your courage. “How about making one more and seeing how you feel then?”

He blinks at you. Then slowly nods.

“Please promise you won’t tell Koz what I’m about to say. Not yet.” He nods again, and you take a deep, deep breath. “She killed me. Mother Nature.”

He flinches, eyes wide. His eyes graze up and down and nowhere as he turns a little. He hops off the table and walks a few steps. In an instant, before you even catch up with yourself, you stand in front of him and look down. He comes back to his senses with a jolt, and gulps.

“Seventy-five years ago, on a typical Saturday night during an ordinary camping trip, me and my son got in the crossfire of monsters. And I heard her voice. I couldn’t see her, but I was, I guess, believing enough that I could hear her talk. She scoffed at us and basically told us to fend for ourselves and then she caught—” Your back aches again. “—caught me with one of her spikes. Then a few more. And then I can only remember Selene. I’m lucky my son is also still alive, and that Arden wasn’t grieving two people after that.”

You’ve moved up as you’ve spoken. Sandy stops, back against the table leg, trapped. He glances around you, but you loom over him, a barrier to the door beyond. His tight-lipped expression finally makes you stop, as does the subtle collection of gold at his fingertips. You stand down, stepping to the side in case he feels the need to escape.

“Sorry.”

The tension dissipates, then dissolves completely as one of your machines beeps, signaling the end of a cycle. You rush over to the table and unload the tubes. Half of them are further studies into the amplified Source, made only at the request of Bunny and North. Sure, it’ll power someone up in a pinch, but at what cost?

 _Well, you knew the poison would kill a human in a pinch, too._ Mentally, you shrink away from the thought, but can’t shake it entirely. The four or so tubes shining with iridescent Spring weigh heavy in your hand, and you push them into their own rack. Hopefully, you’ll forget they exist and have to start all over from the beginning if asked. That’ll take another month or so of R&D to catch up again. But the way it shimmers, even behind the other substances, you know it’s only a matter of time, either before they come looking for more results or your own curiosity gets the better of you again.

“I’m sorry,” Sandy says. He leans against the door. “I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I, until about a week ago. I’d figured it was another spirit months ago, after you all crashed into my life, but I never would have guessed…”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“Yes. Eventually. I think it’ll come up one way or another.” You sit down and curl up around the table, sorting through the samples and trying to decide which one to look at next for what variable. “I just don’t know _how_ to tell Koz. He’s ready to explore his life as the general, but what if he pulls back when I tell him this?”

“Do you think he’ll hate you?”

“No. I just don’t want him to hate his daughter. Or himself.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type of person who leans too far into self-hatred.” Resentment clouds his otherwise neutral tone. “Everything I heard about General Pitchiner created a glowing portrait of a noble man. That’s why it was so devastating to learn he was now the terror of the galaxies.” He rolls a pebble of dreamsand together and flicks it into the wall. It sticks there for a second before sliding down, dissipating the closer it gets to the baseboard. “I suppose that’s why they say ‘never meet your heroes.’”

“He forgot.”

Sandy sits and leans against the wall, not looking at you. He’s so still you think he’s gone to sleep, but after a second he whispers, “I know. That almost makes it worse than if it had been a deliberate, sober choice. Suddenly he was no longer the same person because he had no idea who the previous person was. A chance to start fresh, and the choice he made was to destroy.”

He lets you putter around in the quiet for several more minutes. You prep slides, you watch them, you make notes, you try not to leave too many stray tears in the microscope lens.

“Mother Nature is my friend,” he finally says. He’s up again, sifting his fingers through the amplified sand and shivering. “As I told Kozmotis, I wrangled her as a shooting star. She was stuck in there for who knows how long, and after years of traveling with her across the stars, we crashed here. She was barely out of her teens, I believe. It sounded like it when she spoke.”

“You could hear her? Also, maybe this is a weird Earthling question, but how was she a _star?”_

“I suppose by your scientific definitions, she wasn’t,” he chuckles. “She wasn’t at the center of a star whale-sized ball of gas, no.” He continues before you can ask about the star whales. “But by all starcatching parameters, she was at the heart of a wishing star: a dense bundle of magic derived from, well, a Wishing Source.”

“Was Wishing the only Source on your planet?”

“No. But if you’re asking about the Source Kozmotis would be most familiar with, that would be his home planet’s Source of Dreams.”

“That… tracks, I guess.”

“We had Dreams, too.” He rolls his eyes and laughs at your confusion. “You think this is the only planet that has a Spring? Or a Summer, Fall, and Winter, for that matter?”

“So… convergent magical evolution?”

“I don’t know what that means.” He shakes his head. “Sources vary, and some planets have only one. Some have hundreds. Some repeat across whole galaxies. Rarely can you find one unique to an entire system.”

“And Mother Nature is attuned to one of them?”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot she never told me, and she was devastated to learn that her father had strayed so far into evil. She almost went supernova because of it.”

You’re terrified he’s verging into too much he promised not to tell, but you clam up in the hopes he doesn’t stop talking.

“She’s made a home here, just like the rest of us. But I think she’s been watching him all these years.”

“Why? If she didn’t like all that he’s done, why stick around?”

The bitter undercurrent of that statement stings worse than wild blackberry thorns at your ankles, and your lips shrivel up as the final words drop from your mouth. All you can do is lean your head in your hands and rub your eyes. Your shoulder twinges, but you ignore it for as long as you can manage until both the gross sensation and your anxiety over the mark force you to find the salve. Sandy isn’t watching as you say and do this, thankfully. But he’s gotten that faraway look back on his face. You skim a layer of the salve onto your shoulders as best you can, and just as the mossy smell fades, Sandy is back to stream out more dreamsand. The third, gigantic barrel you have to fill is nearly topped off; this should be more than enough.

“I suppose she stayed for similar reasons we all did,” Sandy whispers as the barrel crackles with your magic. “Earth is home now, whether we planned it to be or not. And I think she’s found a purpose or two here. Just like us all.” He gestures to all your equipment. Then he pauses before saying, “I have one more suspicion, but that’s getting far too close to the boundaries of my promise, I think.”

“Thanks for what you’ve told me.”

“Of course.” He starts floating to the door, using a stream of sand to grasp the knob. “Oh, and don’t worry,” he says. “I promise not to say anything until you give the go-ahead. I hope you found what you were looking for in our chat.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I could use another soon.”

“Okay.”

He hovers away, and you start dividing the sand into portions: raw arrows, composite arrows, defenses, and of course, personal studies. Half a weight is gone from your shoulders after the chat, but even though there’s less to sort in your mind, it’s still a jumbled mess of a place. You glance around. Not unlike your current lab in the real world.

The glow of the amplified Spring samples catches your eye again. Figuring you might as well give in now, when you have the mindfulness to take things slow, you drag one of the tubes down. A violet flicker also catches your eye from a different shelf.

It’s a horrible idea. A terrible idea. A fascinating idea. Those are always the worst, most productive ones.

You slip a mask on over your mouth, carefully adjust the cloudy, oversized goggles you own over your lens, and snap on some latex gloves. Using your longer pair of forceps, you withdraw the tiniest splinter of the spire crystal you can find in the small container. A whine kicks up in the ear closest to the mark, but you bite back the discomfort. At least it's diminished a bit from the layer of salve you put on. Once you set the shard down, you shut the container again and shove it back into its place.

You remove one glove, summoning your power to a fingertip. A globule dances out at far as it can under your direction, about three inches from the main source. You set it near the shard, inching closer until you feel a faint pull. It’s like holding onto one magnet and setting another nearby with the opposing polarity: soon enough, you’re going to feel it affect the other as it’s compelled to draw closer.

The shard slips forward for a second. You jerk away, not wanting to touch it, and then you have to inch closer yet again. It pulls forward, and you stop yourself from pulling as well. It rests. It slips toward you. It rests again, presumably caught on some sort of dust clump or minuscule divot in the table. You wait one more time and then finally, the shard slides into the edge of your power. You wait for it to catch on, and the instant it does, you release the power and put the glove back on.

The shard becomes a piercing speck of violet so bright it looks more pink than purple. And it hurts to look at, not just due to the brightness creating shadow dots across your eyes, but because the tinny scream in your ear accelerates, pounding against your eardrum. You hold your breath. Fighting through the agony to unscrew the vacuum-sealing cap of the container housing a bit of Spring, you shove the crackling shard between the gap before slamming the cap back down and twisting it back in place.

You release the skipping breath, mask flapping back and forth like a boat sail. It’s only when you’ve double-checked that the seal is tight that you unhook one elastic to let the mask hang by one ear and remove the goggles.

Nothing unusual happens at first. The green energy flickers around, creating prism rainbows where it manages to shine just the right way through the glass. Actually, it moves towards the top of the container, a verdant gradient from top to bottom, where the least bit of reddish glow muddles into it and redirects the ombre back out to magenta. Between both colors, your oily power crackles and climbs.

It’s a slower process than what you’re used to. Normally, the discrete powers take only a few moments to pull into yours and then combine. A whole twenty minutes pass before the magenta and green energies form together. They swirl faster and faster as the process continues until there’s nothing but a rusty brown sheen.

And then a flash.

It’s a blink or you miss it moment, and though you swear you didn’t blink, suddenly there’s a powdery residue at the bottom of the container. The brownish color flings itself against the edges of the glass, spinning until you can see the green again, and also a white-blue glittering stream. The swirling slows and slows, and after another few minutes, the green and white orbit around each other like lazy, dancing snakes.

You get another really bad idea.

You hook the mask back over your ear, and slowly unscrew the cap. Once it opens, a burst of glitter-green _fmphs_ out from the pressure releasing. You lean away and wait for it to dissipate. Once it does, you glance behind you, making sure not even Kidra is here to watch you make a mistake, and you poke two gloved fingers in.

The green swirl passes over it first. The sensation of a warm shower and safety tingles up your hand, though far more diminished than it had been at the Source itself in the Warren. Nothing unusual there, save for the fact that your catalyst hadn’t combined the magics permanently. You go to write a few shorthand notes as the feeling shifts to that of primordial radiation, of inevitability and irreversible change, of ignorance. You look closer, and a tiny, green bud is sprouting from the glove.

And then the glittering stream passes over your finger, and nostalgia slams into you. A sense of safety bundling into your heart. You scratch the notes in as fast as you can. The bud darkens and decays, small vein-like roots peeling up from the latex as well. It drops off, and you suddenly feel a hole at your fingertip.

 _The bud didn’t just sprout._ Your heart quickens. _It grew from the material itself._

The glittering white, now that you can feel it on your skin, is far colder than the green. So cold. What you think holding onto a block of dry ice without a glove would feel like. The heartwarming sensations suddenly turn to desolation, decay, stagnation. And your fingertips become so cold it burns.

You yelp and draw your fingers from the container. You try to seal it back up, but the bottle slips from your fingers, wobbling out of your reach. The green and glitter seeps from the open lid, and the pain in your fingers increases. There’s a dark shadow just under the glove. You rip it off, and a numb, tearing sensation makes everything hurt even more as a patch of your skin peels off with the motion.

Your fingertips are a dark purple, and growing darker by the second. It simultaneously hurts and feels so numb that you can only register the pulse flowing through it. Another part of your skin bursts apart like a seam and starts to peel. Like the worst sunburn you’ve ever had a hundred times over. You’re panting, trying to stay calm and think of a way to stop whatever this is. Your eyes dart from shelf to shelf, ticking off every piece of machinery and equipment that won’t help you.

The black keeps spreading, and the only relief you can grant yourself in the moment is that it doesn’t follow the same spreading pattern as the mark on your face. Meanwhile, the haze of glittery green is starting to hang over the worktable, clouding your mind and sending your senses haywire.

You stand, nearly overturning the table, jittering the tub of salve. As you register it, you take the last, dumb chance of the day. Without thinking too hard, you shove your hand into the cream as deep as it’ll go.

It’s like dipping flayed skin into a tub of rubbing alcohol. You stuff your other fist into your mouth, letting the gross, rubbery taste of the glove ground you from the pain.

 _You should let your scream out,_ the rational part of your brain tries to yell over the panic and burgeoning headache. _Someone will hear, and they’ll be able to help._

But just as you start to heed that voice, the tingling and burning subsides to manageable levels. You slowly drag your hand away from your mouth, a section of the glove flapping from the hole your teeth made. You use them to drag the glove all the way off and to gingerly wipe away the salve globs that stick to your hand as you remove it.

One fingertip is very chapped, peeling, and the last knuckle section of both are still a terrifying shade of bruised purple. You scuttle around the lab, dragging items out of the shelves and moving papers until you find the mini first-aid kit you knew you had. Half the contents are gone, but there’s still a wad of gauze wrap. You soak half of it in the salve, then wrap your finger, tying it off the best you can using just your teeth and off hand. Trying to flex your fingers just nets you running stings up and down the appendages.

You grab the container and screw the cap back on, twisting so tightly that you’ll probably have to spend a good chunk of time getting it back open. But that’s a problem for later, for when you’re not half-blinded by pain and a dampened whistle in one ear and blackening fingertips and coming down from an unplanned high from strange substances. You shove the bottle to the corner of your table and lay your head against the rough table, taking as many deep, calm breaths in and out as you can manage, letting that sudden, horrible pain pass.

A few seconds later, you’re jostling awake. You sit up, blinking to focus.

“Darling, what happened?”

Koz, you realize. A sting makes you hiss as someone else unwraps the bandage. Jack makes a hurling noise, and North just goes, “Ah…”

“Are you all right?” Koz repeats. You manage to nod, still unsure what exactly happened. He gives a sigh of relief and presses his forehead to yours. You squeeze your eyes shut and grind your teeth.

“I thought you were in here all day,” Jack says. “How’d you get _frostbite?”_

“You are lucky it is minor case,” North adds.

You finally glance at your fingers. The tips are shiny, and they do look disgusting behind the skin that’s peeled away. Only a light dusting of that purple color remains, most of it looking like a bruise in its yellowing phase. North starts to re-wrap it, and you dig your nails into Koz’s wrist as the pressure stings again.

“Good. Pain is good sign. It will take much less time to heal.”

You take one more glance at the container, what little is left of the separate streams still whirling around each other. The black, powdery residue dots the sides from where it was flung earlier, a bit of it sliding off every time a stream passes over it.

“I need another Source sample as soon as possible,” you say.

“You need to tell us what—”

“I think I’m on the verge of understanding what they are, and to do that I _really_ need a sample of one of the others, as soon as possible. We need to go to the Summer—”

Kozmotis shoves you back down into the chair as you try to stand up. The three of them glare at you.

“But first,” you say slowly, “I guess I owe you an explanation…”

The Antarctica spire somehow channels the Source of Winter. Whirlwind hours of research after you injure yourself, you remain adamant that even if the Source is located somewhere else, the spire has to be taking Winter from the planet.

“Maybe it sits over a concentrated vent, or there’s a direct drilling line to a vein, or they grew more of the spire underground to tap into it.” Koz has to restrain you to make you sit down as he changes your bandages. The discovery has you completely awake and jazzed for more. “But the properties of that glitter swirl are so similar to Spring that I’m willing to bet money it was somehow Winter.”

“How did you get purified Winter, though?” He clasps your hand gently in both of his. “If it was thoroughly mixed with the spire—which was already an unholy mixture of dark and ice—how did you purify it?”

Your leg bounces under the table so fast that the tremors shift the first aid kit millimeter by millimeter across the table until it’s at the edge. Koz sets it back about a foot, but your excitement just starts the migration process over again.

“Dunno, but my guess right now is that it was a spontaneous thing. Unless!” You take a deep breath, an idea striking you. “If my power can be a catalyst and effect a combination or mixture, what’s to say it can’t also be a separation process?”

He sighs and massages your fingers gently, reaching out to twirl a finger in your hair.

"On the one hand," he says, "I'm so ancient that whether magic is knowable or not changes nothing about my relationship to it. On the other hand, despite how much trouble I have following the technical language you use, what I _can_ follow does intrigue me as to its true nature." He threads his fingers through your uninjured hand and lays a kiss on your lips. And then he holds your chin, making you look at him as he says, “But I'm more than a little perturbed that you decided to test this _on yourself. Alone._ Discover what you must. Experiment how you must. But please do not put yourself in harm’s way to do it. I really don’t want to find you passed out on your worktable with an injury again.”

You nod sheepishly. “Okay, Koz. I'm sorry.”

“Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *toasts* cheers for tomorrow. go vote if you haven't and you're able, commiserate with me on [tumblr](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com) if you wanna


	64. Good Friday

Kozmotis and the spirit follow Sanderson’s glimmering form at a distance. He’s difficult to look at during the best of times, but the glare bouncing off him from the blazing noontime sun is unbearable.

He and the spirit glide on Kidra over sand dune after sand dune, scouring the northern portion of the Great Sand Sea. According to the rabbit, the entrance to the Source of Summer is somewhere within the quickly shifting sands. Kozmotis cringes as his cuffs slide up and down his sweaty wrists, and he shoves more fabric in between where he can reach. He does the same with his collar, and as his spirit turns around to hand him the water, they nearly spit out the mouthful they’ve just taken. They choke for a second, manage to swallow, and once they catch their breath, they laugh.

“Sorry! Sorry… was not expecting a haphazard cravat and cuffs on you.”

He takes the water and pours a bit into his hand. The eternally cold Pole water fizzles in the heat a bit, but it is a relief running down his throat and against his face and neck. He hands it back to them, letting his touch linger over their fingers, still wrapped in a layer of bandages.

A glare passes over the both of them, and Sanderson sidles up nearby. He motions a bit to the southeast, and they turn, Kidra panting as they trudge up yet another towering pile. At the peak, Sanderson takes off to a point about a mile away.

By the time they’re under the twinkling form of the Sandman, they’ve had to get off Kidra and lead them through the loose sand with promises of treats and water. It turns out that just behind the next pile of sand is a small, rocky jut of stone. The rabbit had mentioned there was a huge cliff here with a cave leading straight to the Source, but it’s nothing more than a six foot high clump of sandstone.

“Are you sure?” the spirit asks.

Sanderson nods. He wipes his brow and summons his magic up, shining even brighter. Kozmotis has barely gotten used to being in the light for prolonged periods of time, but this is far too much. He shields his face as sand swirls around him, scuffing over his exposed skin. The spirit grabs hold of him as well, and he also feels Kidra poke their head between them. There’s a slight sinking sensation as the minor sandstorm continues, but they shift again and again to keep themselves at the surface.

A few minutes later, Sanderson says, “All right. The way is clear now.”

They break the huddle and see the uncovered rock standing far above them. The cave is visible now, though a tall pile of sand still crowds the entrance, a slumping gap just big enough for them to push through into the darkness beyond. The spirit shoves their heavy pack and the water into his arms, giggling and looking up at him as they beam.

“Let’s go!”

They and Kidra clamber up the soft slope, trails of sand giving and sifting downward as they climb. Kozmotis looks over to Sanderson, who’s hunching over and fanning his face, a leftover dervish of blinding dreamsand kicking up a pile of regular sand where he stands on the ground. Kozmotis holds out the canteen to him, sloshing the water around a bit to get the point across.

Sanderson tries to take one step, pants, and then swipes it out of his hold. He tilts his head back and takes enormous gulps so quickly he chokes for a second.

“Not all of it!” Kozmotis yells, grabbing it back.

Sanderson jolts away for a second, glaring at him. He moves his shoulder up in just the right way to throw a terrible beam of light and heat right into Kozmotis' eyes. He hisses and slaps his hand over his face, stumbling a few steps. When he can finally see around the dots pulsing in front of his eyes, he registers the final glimmer of Sanderson’s form disappearing into the cave. Right after, his spirit pops over the edge of the pile, waving for him to hurry up.

The cavern is more bearable than the outside, but only just. A sweltering breeze pushes from deeper in, barely doing enough work to dry their sweat. But at least it’s dark. Despite having no magical connection shadows anymore, Kozmotis can’t help but lean into their perverse familiarity whenever he can.

His spirit slips next to him as they walk, wrapping their pinky around his, their other hand curling into Kidra’s mane. He squeezes their finger in reply and leads them down the corridor where a golden glow flickers.

“Is he already ahead of us?” he asks.

“Yeah. He kinda just zoomed past.” They tug him to a stop. “Did something happen?”

“Nothing outside of what’s been happening.”

“You’re really that determined to get him to tell you, huh?”

“She’s my daughter. The only part of my past I have left. The only proof remaining that I was ever a good person.”

“She doesn’t have to be that proof, you know,” they reply. “But if you want her to be, you don’t necessarily have to go through him to get the info.”

“The others know her whereabouts?”

“Tooth mentioned going to see her a couple centuries ago. Well, she didn’t see her, only Sandy was let in, but she might be able to tell where that same place is they were supposed to meet up.” They glance down the way, where the glow has nearly gone and start walking again. “I wonder if Bunny has any idea. Before Sandy told his story, I’d’ve figured he would know more about Mother Nature, given his own affinities.”

“Good thing that’s not the case, or I’d stand zero chance at finding her and trying to make amends.” He contemplates his next sentence. “Back at the new moon… how did you know her title before she revealed herself?”

Their foot lands on the rocky floor with an echoing slap that the increasingly muggy air eats up. They hiss and recover the misstep before getting too far out of sync.

“I guess that’s a good question, huh?” They squeeze his finger even tighter, not even realizing until he untangles them and just holds their hand properly. They mutter an apology. “Before you and the Nightmare Man popped out of the portal, she was trying to interrogate me on why you and I—how did she say it—had come to ‘know each other so intimately.’”

“What did you tell her?”

“The entire sordid affair.” They look him in the eye, but then cough out an unenthusiastic laugh. “Not really. She told me she was Mother Nature when I tried to demand my own answers. And then you showed up before our conversation could really get started.”

“What answers were you looking for?”

He’s on the precipice of pushing through their block, he has to be. They blink and stop again, placing their hands to his forearms and rubbing circles into his sleeves. He leans down, hesitating to kiss them or comfort them in case they want to speak, searching their expression as best he can to find traces of further reluctance so he can reassure them they can take their time if need be. They open their mouth.

“Are you coming?”

The stage-whisper yell of Sanderson tears the both of them away from the moment. The Sandman simply shrugs and points further down. The spirit cups Kozmotis' face, attempting to smile, but it barely tugs the corners of their mouth, let alone reaches their eyes.

“After Easter,” they whisper. “I’ll tell you after we get through this weekend.”

“You promise?”

“Do you you want me to pinky swear?”

They hold up their finger to him, an actual smile softly working its way through their features. He clasps their hand again.

“That’s not necessary, darling. I trust you.”

They press a quick kiss to his hand and walk as fast as they can down the cave, nearly so fast as to drag him along.

*************

Much like the tunnels leading to the Source of Spring, these caves show off the evidence of Summer the farther they go. At first, the sandstone walls and floors are dark, blank, rough rock. Sandy’s glow reflects off veiny deposits and tiny flecks of quartz that create star-like glimmers on the walls. But about a half hour into the trek, the glimmers remain even after he passes by.

You scurry over to one of the walls for a moment to get a better look, running your fingers over it. The flecks and bands gleam in furious shades of gold, red, orange, and magenta, and you hiss and yank away after feeling them burn like the sun outside.

Perhaps that’s why, despite how dark it otherwise is, the cavern is unbearably hot. Even for someone used to disgusting, muggy summers, you’re losing the ability to breathe as easily as you had in the dry air of the desert proper. The rising humidity threatens to drown you, and you imagine a regular human would have an even more difficult time trying to make their way to the Source, if humans are even able to find the entrances at all.

You and Koz catch up with Sandy, who’s plodding along and breathing heavily, using both of his hands to wipes away the sweat dripping down his face.

“You need water?” You hold the canteen out to him. He glances at Koz for a second, then shakes his head.

“Drink, Sanderson, you sound like an asthmatic hog,” Koz says, taking the canteen from you and shoving it into his arms. Sandy glares up at him. He sighs, saying, “Please help yourself.”

Sandy pops open the top, takes the quickest swig, and closes it. He hovers again, and tosses it back. Koz juggles it for a second. You want to ask, but you get the feeling it'll have to wait til after Easter.

“After Easter” sounds like a timeframe that will simultaneously never happen and yet pass too soon. Even as your promise to Koz lingers just over your shoulder, you still have no idea how to tell him his daughter killed you, but maybe that’s like a bandage that needs to be ripped off rather than trying to spare the harsh pain and drag it out.

_And once I tell him, how do I tell Jordan?_

Jordan is also an “After Easter” thing. The idea of seeing him again—after years of believing him dead or out of reach, after a year of regretting running when he could see you—makes your heart twirl. Despite the oppressive climate, your steps are light, your stomach floats, and you're more awake and aware of the potential for the future than ever before.

_That’s not right,_ your bully of a brain barges in to say. _This feeling can’t be right._

The quartz shines brighter and brighter. You dance across the different light beams, looking like varying colors of stained glass windows, and the heat is like a sauna focused through a magnifying glass. Kidra pokes at the colors, huffing at the burn, and they press close to you, ears flattening. You wet your hand and wipe the water over their ears and face plate.

Suddenly, your nose burns with a familiar brackish tang. You turn a corner and see the first clump of beach grass, two more clusters dotting the trail ahead, the tall stalks waving back and forth in a breeze you can’t physically feel. You run your finger over the rough, hardy leaves. They’re so thin that they threaten to slice into your skin, like the sawgrass back home. Carefully, you wrap your fingers around the base of a leaf and pluck it from the plant, tucking it into your bag for studying later. As you pause, your ears catch…

_It can’t be._

You race forward, past Koz and Sandy, ignoring the heavy atmosphere to chase that familiar scent and sound.

The cavern opens up into a much wider room than Spring had. This is more of a grand hall, three hundred feet in every direction. Various beach grasses scatter across the sandy floor, marking a few rows of rising dunes before sloping downward into water. You take a deep inhale. Salt water. The comforting white noise of waves crashing on a shore reverberates to you, and you follow the back and forth of the briney water soaking the edge of the sand. Other echoes overlap the ones at the shore: the harsher crash of water onto rocks or piers.

It could be home, if you close your eyes. You could still be on that beach a year ago, holding Alisah and listening to her ramble about everything she wants to do and everything she believes is possible. You could be back in time, making a different decision, to hitch a ride in her parents’ car and see your son.

“Darling?” Kozmotis enters the chamber, canteen in hand, rubbing more water over Kidra’s ears.

The what-if’s of your mind fade. You backtrack to your partner and wrap your hand around his wrist to lead him to the edge of the water. Maybe it was a bad decision to let Alisah go a year ago, but it ranks encouragingly low among all the other questionable ones you made. And now you can stand on a hidden, ancient sandbank in the arms of the former Boogeyman.

“You promised me a vacation awhile back,” you say to him. He laughs, his flushed face going the least bit darker.

“I believe I did, didn’t I? But here?”

“I just want to go back to my home beach.”

“We’ll get there.”

“I know.”

Sandy clears his throat, and you suddenly remember he’s accompanying you two. He hovers about twenty feet in the air, pointing to a spot on the ground a way’s away.

You catch up and crowd around a perfectly circular hole in the ground. The sand refuses to edge further than a foot closer to it, and a manicured ring of beach grass circles about twenty feet out. Spotlights of the quartz burn down in an unfailing, gradient ring at the very edge of the hole. You peek down.

Vibrant playfulness curls over you in a warm wave. It feels familiar, and you strain to remember when you’ve felt this before. Years of vacations, like snapshots of memories, flutter through your mind’s eye in a moment, but they don’t replicate the same sensation. You shake your head and drive them away just as the playfulness and bright contentment starts fading into something more sinister.

This time, you’re ready for the change. Spring faded from hope and peace into ceaseless change and instability. Winter went from nostalgia and comfort to stagnant inevitability and hopelessness. Summer fades from joy and ease into endless repetition and boredom.

Two sides of every season, and the original Sources rule both aspects. They’re not alive to care what one season means to who or where; it just is.

You pull back, shaking your head to rid yourself of the dragging anxiety. Beside you, both Koz and Sandy remain transfixed as their faces grow red, like a sunburn. You grab both of them by their collars and drag them back. Once their eyelines break, they jolt and gasp. Koz smiles at you, then immediately holds his face in pain.

“This is ridiculous.”

“It’s just a sunburn, babe, you’ll be fine.”

He blinks and immediately looks at you. He cocks his head and smiles, though he immediately winces as he does.

“‘Babe?’” he asks.

“Do… you not like that?”

“I quite like it very much, darling.”

“If you two are done,” Sandy says. “I believe you’re here to collect some samples.”

You nod and get to work, trying as best as you can to fill several containers with the Source energy. What you do manage to collect is a glowing orange-yellow that heats through the glass, though thankfully doesn’t melt it. Once you have enough, you take out a dull orb North gave you before you left. You take it around to every reachable corner of the room, letting the snow globe rev up its magic. Unlike the teleportation globes, this one is for tracing and establishing a new travel point. Slowly, the globe absorbs more and more of the nature of this place, until the interior swirls a flaky white at a terrifying rate. According to North, that’s how you know it’s done.

Koz slides up and places a hand to your back. “Now that we're finished here, do we have time to stop at Thera?”

Sandy sighs. "We should get back to the Pole and have them examine this sample. Easter is just over a day from now.”

Koz holds up his hand. A string flickers around his pinky finger. “I made a promise to an adorable little girl not a month ago. I’d rather check in with her sooner than later, as I’m not exactly sure how harsh a pinky promise will be on me should I ignore it too long. Besides,” he continues. “We need another spire sample, don’t we?”

“We can station you there tomorrow to run interference for Easter and collect one,” Sandy snaps. He draws out a teleportation globe, and you're right back to the Pole workshop.

North paces around the globe, leading a line dance of frantic yetis who shove all sorts of papers or images in front of his face. You and Koz part, and you start for the lab, but North calls you over and asks for your help. "Help" largely means to sit back and wait for him to call you up to the sphere yet again and reveal the flickering spires. He refuses to expand on what he’s trying to observe, which you’d find frustrating if you weren’t familiar with that kind of absorption in one’s work. Eventually, you ask a yeti if they can deliver your items to the lab, warning them to be careful, as the Sources are the most fragile, least preservable magical substance you’ve witnessed. They beat out the dreamsand by ten miles, making its dissipation time condescendingly slow.

But a worldwide overcast sky the day before a major holiday might be more pressing than research at the moment.

It’s odd to think that literally nowhere in the world at this moment is there a visible portion of the sky. The Guardians had sent out scouting parties while you were gone, just to be sure, and while some are reporting only a thin cover, it remains that the sky—sunbeams, moonbeams, and starshines especially—cannot reach the planet’s surface.

“They must have done this in the last few hours. We got to the Source like four hours ago, and it was clear. What do you think they’re planning?” you ask North as he passes by. He jolts out of his thoughts.

“Can any of us guess these days?” He adjusts his glasses. “But it’s not going to be good. That much I can know.”

There’s a honk, and Katherine slips off of Kailash to join you two. The huge goose waddles away to stick her face into an open doorway, leading to yelps and cries from the unsuspecting people inside. Katherine hands you another pile of books and glances at the fervor around the globe.

“How’s it going?”

You two look at each other and shrug.

“The world is completely under cloud cover, and we don’t know why. Or what that means,” you say.

Then North claps his hands loudly. You and Katherine flinch at the close sound and shake your heads. But North points to her.

“This has happened before,” he says. “Hundreds of years ago!”

She looks confused for a second before gasping, “Oh! Oh of course… You mean when—”

“When Pitch took over dark side of moon.”

“Wait, what—” But they continue back and forth without answering you.

“Do you remember what caused cloud cover last time, Katherine?”

“No. Not only was I more concerned about suddenly being on the _moon,_ but Nightlight, Manny, and I had a few higher priorities. Like the shadow mechs.”

_“What?”_

“You know, you have told me about those things before, but I am stunned every time. Pitch was crafty up there, wasn’t he?”

“I think his minions were the ones that threw together the dark matter machines, not him. He doesn’t seem the type to get his hands dirty.” She shakes her head. “We figured you all knew what the cover was about down here.”

“Hang on, y’all…”

North purses his lips, then shakes his head. “If others know, they have not told me.”

“Y’all!” you yell. Finally, the pay attention. “Dark matter mechs? _The moon?”_

“Ah, right…” Katherine chuckles and drags a rogue section of hair behind her ear. “The last battle against Pitch before he went quiet until fifty years ago. He sneaked up to the dark side of the moon to re-grow his legions, and he accidentally dragged another Guardian, Nightlight, and me along. The Man In the Moon rescued us before he could take us captive, and we had to battle against a whole slew of dark matter creations.”

“I think you’ve mentioned something like this before,” you say. “After this, that’s when your father and—Nightlight, was it?—went to look around space, right?”

She nods. “During the hectic adventure, a barrier of clouds wrapped around Earth and obscured it. I’m guessing this is very much like it.”

North holds his flat palm out and wobbles it side to side. “It is similar in that it is massive cloud cover, but there is much more sinister air this time. If it’s from same source, then we must hope shadows do not have another powerful ally.”

“If it is from the same source,” a soft whisper floats in, “then she has a lot of questions to answer.”

Sandy hovers over from behind the globe. He sets down on top of a table, crossing his arms and looking up at the twinkling lights. You trade glances with North and Katherine, and then all three of you shift closer to him. He tries to ignore you, mouth pressing into a thin line. You shift even closer, trying to bore holes through his head with your eyes for a long while before he finally relents.

“Last time, it was Mother Nature. She hid the Earth while you were up on the moon. I’m not exactly sure why, though I have my suspicions. As far as I can tell, she’d have no reason to do the same this time.” He rubs his eyes. “At least, I hope not…”

“It might be time to find her and ask for help,” North says

Sandy nods his head side to side. “Perhaps I can get some information from her. At the very least, a simple confirmation as to whether she’s behind this would put my mind at ease.”

*************

Kozmotis pores over maps of every known spire location, trying to track the most likely ways for the shadows to get in and out, as well as the best routes for getting the Guardians in undetected.

“An overhead strike is most practical, as it lends itself to a quick in, quick out method of attack,” he mutters. “We have more than enough people who can fly in order to make a realistic aerial push. But, that limits any ability to infiltrate the ground level.” He contemplates. “And it’s far too easy for the shadows to utilize the ground as a barrier and through-way.”

He unrolls a map that he’s drawn over in black ink, marking all of the thin sections of the veil that lead to his lair that he can remember. There were a few on Thera he'd paid some mind to, with the closest one being halfway between the cinder cone and the nearest town. Provided they haven’t created a new door closer to the area, then that is the shadows' major source of infiltration into the humans’ sphere.

“Well,” he supposes, “A run like Antarctica’s might work, but there’s only so many time Jack can play distraction, especially in his condition. No matter how…” He snorts. “No matter if he be nimble or quick.”

He shuffles a few things around until he uncovers a map of Burgess. If the spires emit a belief-like aura, then perhaps the Nightmare Men weren’t lying to him when they led him over to the lake. He shudders. When they led him straight into that trap. Whenever they take back the town, that’s the first place he’ll advise to look.

The quiet of the battle table breaks as his spirit thunders up the stairs. They shove a stack of books on the table with a thunk and sit, holding their head in their hands as they try to stifle a grin. The eager gleam in their eyes only makes him smile in return.

“Hello, darling.”

“Dark matter moon mechas?” they whisper. He’s unsure what they’re speaking about, and he heads over to them, shaking his head. They grab onto his hand and repeat, “Dark. Matter. Moon. Mechas?!”

There’s a pause, and then the images of him trawling across the dark side of the moon so long ago flicker in his memory. The battle, the production lines, the robots… Perhaps that’s what they mean? He flushes deeply at the memory of not only one of his worst defeats, but yet another portion of his life wasted desperately trying to please the shadows.

“I can explain.”

“Start with how you used dark matter to make robots, please,” they reply, curling their fingers to their chin.

_Oh… They’re on the hunt for alien stories._

Unfortunately, time is thin. He squeezes their hand in reply. “I’m afraid that’ll have to wait until after Easter. I need to see which spires will be best to topple first.”

“Well, we’re heading to Thera, aren’t we? Might as well start there.”

He nods, then points to the books. “Any clues in those?”

“Dunno. Just got them. They might only become useful..." They sigh. "After Easter. When hopefully we can rest for a second.”

He leans down and gives them a kiss, then he hugs their shoulder to him. “Yes. I’ve been saying to North that our next strike after this should be for Burgess. After Easter.”

“I hate that phrase.”

“It’s not much longer.”

His spirit spends a good thirty minutes flipping through their books, taking a note here and there, and sliding strips of paper between pages to reference later. Kozmotis takes his own seat next to theirs, dragging as many of the maps over to him as he can without encroaching on their own pile and rolling up what he doesn't need. The other Guardians filter in not long after that, taking their seats and either chatting amicably, or looking into the distance.

Finally, the rabbit stands, and the table quiets.

He’s well-groomed today. No portion of fur out of place, his whiskers straightened, and he’s free of dye stains or flecks of eggshells. He looks a perfect picture, with clear, untwitching eyes and ears focusing on the whole table. He clears his throat.

“I want to thank you all. This has been one of the worst holiday seasons I’ve gone through in half a century.” He rests his glare on Kozmotis, and just as quickly flicks it away. “I dunno how I coulda made it to today without ya.”

“Of course, Bunny!” the fairy says, a sentiment the rest echo. Kozmotis murmurs something inaudible.

“With a bit of luck and a whole lotta determination—” The spirit shifts uncomfortably beside him. Kozmotis reaches out and rests his hand over their shoulders. “We can make it through tomorrow night, and I can finally get back on the front lines with the rest of ya to knock my proper share of heads together.

“I’m countin’ on you all to keep this night runnin’ smooth. To welcome a new wave of Spring to the world’s children for them to carry in their hearts every day.

"So let’s have a toast before we begin.” He produces a series of cups. He presses one into the tiny arms of the small fairies, laughing. “To the teamwork we’ve been perfectin’ over the years.”

He tosses one up to Jack, who balances it on the tip of his cane before wrapping his hand around it. He hands a tacky, egg-decorated mug to North, winking, and then he lays more dignified ones in front of the goose girl and Sanderson. Then the rabbit passes by Kozmotis without placing one down, setting a cup in front of the spirit. He’d expected nothing less. But then the rabbit slams a cup in front of him as well, sliding away before he can react.

“To a solid victory and new wave of belief to hold us all.”

He pours everyone’s drinks, moving in the same circle until once again he slides between Kozmotis and the spirit. He pours for them first.

“To creativity. Innovatin’ whenever and wherever we can to keep the peoples’ spirits up.”

A moment passes where Kozmotis and the rabbit stare at each other, grinding teeth and clenching jaws to keep from derailing the moment. Kozmotis is about to wave him away since he clearly can’t bring himself to do this, when the rabbit takes a deep breath and forces his next sentence out.

“To hope itself. Without which there’s no chance at a different tomorrow bringin’ us new surprises. Or new choices.”

He glances at the spirit, and then moves on as they reach out for him. He returns to his own place and, after pouring his own drink, raises his cup. The table follows.

“Here’s to crushin’ this Easter and finally movin’ on from this gods-forsaken moment in time!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hows everyone holding up? anxious af? lmao [same](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	65. A Promise Yet Unkept

Finally, Easter.

Thera and Uluru. Those are their targets for tonight. Half of them will jump from place to place to spread Easter and eggs, and the others will split into two, smaller teams. The goal is to collect samples of the spires before knocking them right out of existence. And with any and all hope, collapse a bit of the shadows’ power on the way.

Kozmotis and Jack. His partner and the fairy.

The cloud coverage hasn’t vanished by the time they’re done gearing up. If anything, it’s gotten thicker, and Jack reads out the meteorological reports on his phone as more humans start paying attention. Eventually, the eggs are ready and packed. Kozmotis and his spirit slip to a quieter part of the workshop to say a quick, desperate goodbye. The teams assemble, and he steps through the provided portal.

Kozmotis takes a deep breath of the humid, afternoon sea-salt air of the island. It’s pleasantly warm, but not grossly hot. Certainly more bearable than the Source of Summer. Nevertheless, Jack lets out an exasperated sigh next to him, wiping his face and rolling up his sleeves.

“Thanks, I hate it,” he mutters.

“Oh, cheer up. They could have sent you to Australia.”

“At least it’s fall there.”

“Oh?” Kozmotis turns and walks backwards, watching the boy. “You make a lot of trips down under during the front half of the year?”

Jack runs to catch up, and then plods beside him, digging the end of his staff into the ground with every step. He shrugs.

“I admit,” Kozmotis continues. “I had thought you’d be helping scatter eggs in backyards.”

“Someone has to keep you in check,” he snarks back. “Sandy tried to volunteer, but the rest of us were like, ‘Uhh… maybe not right now.’ Tooth’s not your biggest fan, Bunny’s center stage, and North has teleportation and a rivalry to keep alive, so yeah.” He throws his arms open. “It me.”

“Quite the adaptive linguist, aren’t you?”

“You druther I speak like all the tubular hep cats of yesteryear as I go on and ballyhoo about vibing dark matter? Not all of us are stagnant, bro.” He glances around. “Where are we going, anyway? I thought the spire was that way.”

He indeed points in the direction of the spire, whereas Kozmotis peels off to the side following a dirt road.

“I have a promise to keep, Jack.” He smiles to him. “Just a small diversion. We have time.”

In truth, he has no idea where he is. None of the landmarks ring familiar to him, having spent too little time on the island to really memorize any routes. But a tether around his finger keeps pulling him onward until he crests a hill and sees the village below.

Jack shrugs. “Look, I’m not rushing to kick the hornet’s nest, but I am itching to juggle it like a soccer ball eventually, okay?”

“Of course. You’re not the only one.”

They make their way down the hill and pass the abandoned garage where he’d been overwhelmed. Kozmotis cringes at the memories, and a phantom ache swipes over his entire body. He gives a wide berth to the building, and, just in case, he looks toward the shoreline.

No fog. No looming figure. No Mother Nature.

They wind their ways through the run-down streets as the string continues to tug him forward, whispers and warmth emanating from it. Finally, he recognizes the old house he’d stayed in, tucked away from the main thoroughfare. He picks up his pace, and then breaks into a run. The whisper grows more and more distinct the closer he gets, and soon he can hear physical voices from the backyard

“Stop it, Dimitris! Stop—”

There’s a thud, a child screams, and the tether he’s been following flares up, the voice shrieking through it so suddenly that Kozmotis nearly trips over his feet as the sounds rings through his mind.

“Yo, you okay?”

Jack steadies him, looking between him and where the scream came from. There’s another cry, and he zips off to see what the commotion’s about. As he regains his bearings, Kozmotis hears Jack calling out to the children, whose voices he now recognizes as the two brats who had been bullying Rina. Kozmotis rounds the house.

The bully boy is sitting on top of his friend and practically choking them as he grabs their shirt collar and tugs them up to his face. He’s muttering too low to hear. Jack tries to yank them apart, but phases through them both. He stands back, rolling his eyes and huffing.

“Dimitris!” the other child sobs, thrashing. “Stop it! Please stop it, please—”

They freeze as they finally see Kozmotis panting where he stands in witness of the scene. Their eyes widen, brimming with tears. A single, pitiful, “Help!” echoes through his mind as the tether gleams even brighter, shooting forth from where it’s tied to his finger and connecting to the child’s chest. The boy—Dimitris, apparently—shoves his friend into the dirt as the silver string passes between them. He jumps up, looking wildly, until he follows the line up to Kozmotis himself. There’s a second’s pause, and then he grins wide enough to show off all his teeth.

He bolts.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Kozmotis tosses a stream of silver the boy’s direction, catching him by one arm. Dimitris growls and swipes his hand at them, cutting through them all. A jolt runs up the severed strings to him, and he grinds his teeth as a snippet of a nightmare flashes before his eyes. He reaches out to destroy it, but it disappears. Meanwhile, Dimitris runs farther ahead. Kozmotis makes to follow.

“Kozmotis, please! Wait!”

The other child tangles their hands through his clothes, almost bringing the both of them down to the ground. He huffs and tries to yank free, but they just cling tighter, sobbing into him. He sets his jaw and calms himself a bit.

“I can’t stop him and drag him back here if you don’t let me go,” he says.

“He’s going to the crystal tower in the cinder cone!” the child cries. They look up at him, then flinch and look away. Kozmotis glances at Jack.

“They can’t see me,” Jack says, touching a magic-covered finger to the child’s ear. They yelp and flinch away, trying to find the source of the icy touch. “Not enough snow here to make an impression, I guess.”

Great. He’s on his own with this one.

Kozmotis tries once again to yank out of the child’s grip, but settles for kneeling down in front of them. They sniffle and try to curl in on themself. Kozmotis taps a hand to their shoulder.

“It’s all right,” he says, glancing at Jack. He has an amused look on his face and indicates for him to continue. “Now, what’s this about a tower?”

“The one in the cinder cone up north.” They hiccup and ramble. “I didn’t mean to… Dimitris said it’d be funny…”

Jack leans down and says, “Ask them what their name is. Sometimes that helps re-orient kids if they’re upset.”

Kozmotis shakes his head. “What’s your name?”

“Huh?” they whisper back. “L-Leni. It’s Leni. I’m sorry.”

“For what, Leni?”

“Marina… Dimitris… We went on a trip to the parks up north a few weeks ago. I saw the thing over there, but he snuck away and went to get closer to it. And then he kept talking in the night but I couldn’t see _anything._ So, I just hid under the covers until he stopped.”

Kozmotis grabs them by their shoulders. They freeze, whimpering.

“Where’s Rina?”

“I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt me.”

_“Where is Rina?”_

“Cool it.” Jack zaps his wrist with a small flash of ice. Kozmotis lets Leni go. “Ask them if they know anything else about what he was talking to.”

“You and I both know who the culprits are,” Kozmotis replies.

“I do?” Leni trembles, on the verge of another sobbing fit. Kozmotis takes a deep breath.

“I… was talking to my colleague.” He indicates where Jack is standing. The child scans over the area and shakes their head. “That’s okay. Leni,” he tries again. “Whatever happened was not your fault. Tell me what Dimitris talked about that night.”

“He kept laughing. And he kept mentioning Marina. And he said something about you…”

“What did he say?”

Leni whimpers and chokes out, “I’m scared.”

“I know.” It’s takes all his effort to keep his voice calm, even though his mind races and his heartbeat jumps. “I won’t lie, there are plenty of things around here to be afraid of. But we can’t get rid of them until we know exactly what’s going on. What did he say?”

“He said something about how if they… if they can make him strong enough to kill you, he’d give them…”

Kozmotis doesn’t want to hear it. He wants the moment to stay locked in ambiguity, with nothing right nor wrong. But he wipes away a tear from Leni’s face with a shaky hand and nods for them to continue.

“Yesterday, he led Marina to the garage we found you in. I went, too, because I was scared and he told me it’d be funny but… A tall monster took her and disappeared.” They throw themself into him again. “Please don’t hurt me, I’m sorry!”

Time compresses and expands simultaneously, and both the child’s and Jack’s voices become faraway, muffled noise.

Kozmotis feels himself going through the next motions: comforting Leni, carrying them back to their house, laying them in bed, and drizzling the barest amount of amplified dreamsand into their eyes to knock them out. But he watches himself do everything from an outside perspective rather than participating consciously.

 _I could have been here yesterday,_ he thinks. _I could have been here to stop it._

He tears out of the house and sweeps over the rocky hills. Reaching out with a tether, he tries to find Dimitris. Something catches, a bit of silver shimmering across the landscape, but as he tries to listen to it, there’s only painful static.

“Hey!”

The crook of Jack’s staff hooks around his shoulder and spins him around. Kozmotis lashes back, tethers flying around Jack’s arms, shoulders, and creeping around the staff as well. Jack yells again and blasts him in the face, wrenching the staff backwards hard enough to rip through the strings. The cold blinds Kozmotis for a moment, but it also drags him right back into a whole, unbroken mindset.

“Do _not_ touch my staff!” Jack yells.

Kozmotis finishes rubbing the magic from his eyes and sees that Jack has jumped back a few yards, holding his staff as far away from him as possible. He heaves breaths in and out, his other hand starting to glow.

“Frost.” Kozmotis starts his sentence low, the frustration bringing his simmering anger to a rolling boil. “There is a child out there who has been stolen by the shadows for some nefarious purpose we have yet to understand and very little time to prevent.”

He closes in, pulse rushing around his body, creating a self-sustaining loop of restlessness.

“There is also _another_ child out there gleefully aiding the shadows. And it would seem that he is both too cruel and too naive to realize his mistake.”

He steps up and looms over Jack, not caring about the boy’s frantic glare or if he’s about to use the control stone.

“I have better things to do than steal your crutch.”

With that, he turns his back and redoubles his efforts to get to the spire as fast as possible. They have her there, they have to.

He’s almost at the top of the hill when a wave of cold envelopes him. A thin layer of ice holds his ankles and knees, and then makes its way up to his waist before he hears a groan of exhaustion behind him.

Kozmotis easily cracks it, turning and roaring, _“BOY! WE DO_ NOT _HAVE TIME—”_

A circle of ice slaps across his mouth. Kozmotis struggles free of the film at his feet, trying to yank off the muzzle without tearing the skin of his lips clean off. Almost immediately, the cuffs and collar activate, and he’s thrown off-balance, rolling back down the hill until Jack stops him with his foot. He leans down into Kozmotis’ face.

“First of all,” he yells. “My name is _still_ ‘Jack,’ not ‘boy.’ Secondly, I expect an apology after you snap out of this… whatever state you’re in right now. Thirdly—” He lightly knocks the end of the staff against Kozmotis’ head. _“Don’t run into such an obvious trap!_ Holy moly, man.”

He leans back out of his face, dismissing the ice gag and freeing his cuffs. Kozmotis crawls away, rubbing his face and catching his breath. Jack glides up and peeks over the nearby hilltop, looking in the direction the spire should be in. Kozmotis drags himself to his feet just as Jack reaches to his side and pulls out the communication orb, tweaking a few things along its surface.

“I mean, it’s cool seeing you concerned about kids’ well-being for once,” he says, looking up briefly. “But the situation’s changed. We need _help_ now.”

Kozmotis stumbles over and sits on the ground next to Jack, who finally speaks into the device. “Yo, it’s Jack. We’re on Thera, and we had a run-in with some local kids. One’s been talking to the shadows, and another… Another has been… taken.”

Jack repeats the message twice more, voice shaking on the repeats. He waits for the replies, holding the orb with both hands after nearly dropping it from trembling too hard. Kozmotis watches his face. Between the power he’s just expended and the unconcealed worry on his face, Jack looks like he’s on the brink of dropping. Kozmotis’ pulse evens, and his breathing regulates. The feverish thoughts whirling around his head slow, and it becomes easier to separate impulsive strikes from smart tactics.

And then the guilt.

Kozmotis lowers his head into his hands, trying not to think about Rina, and about who—or what—may or may not be waiting for him at the other end of the island. This can’t be happening again. Not to him. He doesn't even remember the last time, but the hole in his memory is derived straight from an emptiness in his heart that he knows shouldn’t have ever existed.

It’s not long before the Easter brigade confirms receipt of the message.

“Katherine and Sandy will meet up with you immediately,” North says, voice too even and calculated for the man to successfully hide his shock. “Bunny and I will try to rush eggs, but this is delicate process.”

“Heard,” Jack replies. “Pop Sandy and Katherine over, and we’ll get to work looking for the girl and that other kid.” He pauses. “Tooth, you read?”

Nothing but a jittering, twisting sound just below human’s abilities to hear makes its way through the device. Jack shakes the orb, causing his staff to fall from his lap. Kozmotis automatically reaches for it, but stops halfway. He retracts his hand, fully expecting the lazer-focused glower he meets when he finally brings himself to look at Jack again. He drags it back to him, slipping it under his feet as he once again returns to his friend.

“Tooth!” he yells. “Tooth answer the call!”

A snippet of her voice—and the faintest evidence of his spirit’s—fizzles through the device for only a moment before what Kozmotis recognizes as the sound of hungry shadows coalesces into such a dire note that Jack flings the device away. It cracks against a nearby rock, pieces flying off. The noise stops.

“We have to help them,” Kozmotis says. Everything is falling apart. Jack shakes his head.

“We have to _trust_ them.”

“But—”

“Choose,” Jack says. He doesn’t yell, doesn’t spit, doesn’t even lace his words with his trademark snide tone. “Choose who to help right now: Rina or your partner. Personally, I’m a little biased toward the former, given my line of work. But I also think between them and Tooth, they can at least evacuate just fine.”

“How can you know they’ll be okay?”

“I don’t. Just holding out that hope, right?” He scans the sky, and points not long after; incoming is a streak of gold, a white bird following close behind. “They’re here. We’re going for Rina.”

Jack starts off, pauses, and then shoves a teleportation globe into his hands. He flips his staff to his hands with his feet and jumps into the air, crossing paths with the goose just at the right moment to latch on. The goose girl and the Sandman take a glance at him, the latter starting to approach. But Jack says something that makes them take pause and fly on.

If not for the tracking crystal making one quick, ominous glow, Kozmotis swears he would be the closest to true freedom he’s felt in months.

He walks the few yards to pick up the communication orb, but it crumbles fully between his fingers. No way to reach them to confirm they need help or not. Unless…

He hasn’t tried this before, hasn’t even witnessed it’s full potential since he’d been stuck in the shadow corridor at the mercy of the warped memories sent his way. Kozmotis closes his eyes, and hold his palm over his chest, imagining he can just feel it below the surface of his skin. And then it manifests. The tangles of his former life loop and fray just below his hold. This one he can tell was his wife’s, as the single thread left hanging on—barely visible as it flies off like a spider’s silk into the sky—doesn’t so much glow as it does refract a bit of light. She truly is gone, but not fully separated from himself to rot or wither.

Too many half-memories of emotions surface, and he moves on before he can’t, drawing on the other tangle. This one glows, the fraying thread dangerously taut as it flies beyond the horizon. He resists the urge to find the other end immediately, but that will have to wait.

With the feelings of those tethers fresh in his memory, Kozmotis concentrates, searching for another. Voices pour through his mind, a jumble of excitement, casual conversation, and people calling his name. One in particular he catches in the midst of everything. He follows that thread, blocking out every single other distraction.

“Koz?”

He nearly breaks at the clear sound of their voice, opening his eyes to see a tightly woven cord leading faraway across the ocean to where they are.

 _I can feel you,_ he tries to say to them. They don’t reply, and he’s not sure if they can hear him as clearly through this connection, but there is a sense of their state of being. A heady mix of anger, terror, and desperation whirls around them before a wave of calm, silence, contentment.

Righteous surety that nudges him into a state of unease.

He checks the cord again. It is completely intact, glowing more brightly than the other had, pulsing with life and promise.

 _I love you,_ he sends out to them, not waiting for an answer before closing the connection. He turns and scrambles up the hill and over the ground, quick as he can before the glow of the Sandman disappears, dragging him back to the northern part of the island. He searches for a different connection, needing to know.

A healthy, sparkling tether rushes from his pinky finger, marking his path.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope everyone is staying safe, wearing masks, and resisting the emotional black hole of doomscrolling twitter! join me on a [tumblr](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com) if you will or comment down below and give me your self-care tips please.


	66. Into the Widening Gyre

You and Tooth teleport straight into the middle of the stifling Outback. The last time you’d come so close to feeling like you were in an unforgivable oven was, in fact, yesterday, and it's been a bit of whiplash.

 _Should have specified that wish for being in hotter temperatures from a few days ago,_ you think. At least it’s dark out, so you’ll miss the worst of it on the mission.

You walk a good few miles until you reach the edge of the spire’s clearing, carefully checking around your feet so you don’t disturb the wildlife. You’re pretty sure that even Australian animals don’t have enough venom to kill you a second time, but who knows with this place.

The spire area is even more desolate than you remember seeing barely a month ago, and there’s far more fearlings. A swell of them pulses around the edges, looking more like shadowy tendrils as they move together to reach in and out, barely stretching past the polygonal edges that mark the perimeter of the magic-adjacent location. You, Tooth, and a dozen small fairies crouch in the shrubbery behind a largo stone as best you can. In the distance, the famous mountain of a rock juts up against the skyline, though it’s too dark for you to see much of its detail.

“Nothing to do but wait until they get here,” Tooth says.

But she keeps running her hands over her swords, and her wings tremble. Kidra settles between the two of you, and you huddle together, waiting for Easter to catch up. In the meantime you carefully rummage through your bag, taking stock once again of all your tools. Placing a small string of grenades Tooth and Katherine helped you make on the ground—an upgrade of sorts from your arrowtips—as well as small tubs of dreamsand, empty containers, and whatever else you packed and re-packed, you start making small gestures and whispering a bit. Talking to yourself is second nature at this point, but it does help the ideas flow a little better, and you’d like at least half a plan before Team Easter shows up.

“So, how long will one hit of this last?” Tooth asks, holding up a bottle of amplified Spring.

You reach over and tug it out of her hand. She resists for a second, but gives it up, and you put it to the other side of yourself as you continue to organize your tools. You try to forget about it while at the same time seeing how you might have to work it into the plans. The Antarctica job gave you you decent information about how resilient the spires are to physical damage, so you came fully prepared. Tooth keeps confirming that the Nightmare Man isn’t directing these shadows, so not only do you have more time to work, but you don’t have to borrow Sandy after the other team makes their flyover in a little bit.

“How long will it last?” Tooth asks again, firmly.

“Well, it’s only been tested twice, but it seems a huge inhale can last upwards of a minute or two. Continuous exposure to the gas-like stuff could make it last as long as you’re breathing it, potentially.” You shove it away into your quiver where you know she can’t get it. “But since I’ve only tested it twice, I don’t know how far the ‘determination’ can take someone. I felt physically stronger when I sniffed it, but I didn’t go out of my way to try and rip a book in half. And I didn’t really want to do anything for awhile after the hangover part.”

“Could we test it tonight?” She glances over toward the spire again, clicking one sword in and out of its sheath. “Might be worth it if we want to break this thing.”

You slap a tub of amplified sand in front of her, and more gently place one of the delicate grenades down, too.

“We have more than enough. The sand can keep them at bay and the bombs will hopefully crack the spire enough that I can at least get a sample.” Opening your bag, you show her the rest of the bombs, snug in your bag like eggs in a nest. You may have taken some inspiration from the ones Bunny made; you may have also snuck a few flowers from the Warren to give a few of them an extra _oomph._ “I hope it’s enough to knock it over, but that does mean one of us has to get near enough to it to toss these.”

Kidra huffs, laying their head on your lap. Tooth reaches out and strokes their bony plate, and then an ear. There’s a good hour’s worth of silence, and then the both of you feel the stones in your pockets warm and buzz. You hand Tooth some of the equipment so she can dash in first, and you hop onto Kidra’s back, waiting for the flyover.

A streak of gold announces them, looking like a shooting star that refuses to burn out. A part of the shadows stirs, but doesn’t attack. Then the sleigh and Kailash also appear against the blank sky. A croaky whine kicks up, and the tendrils of shadows really start to rise up and mirror the incoming movements.

The shadows gather at the side the Guardians fly near, the side closest to you two running thinner and shallower until a breach forms. It’s a small hole, one you can barely slip Kidra through, but it’ll do. The Guardians circle nearby, never coming within striking range, and the shadows continue to hiss and screech.

Tooth hands a grenade to each of the fairies with her. “I’ll go first, and then you follow,” she says to them. They nod and chirp. “Stay safe, and get out of the blast radius as soon as you drop these.”

They shoot into the sky, flying just high enough to pass over the shadows, but too low for the shadows to instantly detect them. A small shudder runs through the darkness as they pass over the perimeter, but the majority of the movement still focuses on the others. They’ll be moving along soon, though; this stop is just a brief distraction to get you and Tooth started.

You lose sight of her flickering form until the first explosion goes off. A blinding flash lights the area, and then a sound like glass shattering reaches you. Rubbing your eyes free of spots, you whistle. As you approach, a dozen or so other explosions go off in sequence, and you can feel the signal stone buzz in your pocket. By the time you breach the wall of shadow, the others have gone to their next Easter stop. It’s just you and Tooth, working as quick as you can as the fearlings reform the barrier and roar in your direction.

The shadows swirl higher and higher, trying to cut off any aerial escape you might be planning. For your part, you rapid fire arrows into the encroaching wave, riding in a circle to cover every angle as Tooth and her fairies dart to and from the spire. You keep your bag open to let the scurrying fairies pop in and out and take however any more grenades they need to take it down and blast off samples galore.

After a few minutes of fending off the shadows, you get into a groove of how to deal with them. You haven’t, up to this point, battled a horde of directionless fearlings. It’s still not easy, but they focus far more on lashing out and trying to overwhelm you and Tooth than on being overly tricky. It works to some extent, but there’s no strategy to these fearlings than “catch the intruders.”

After another series of explosions go off, the spire creaks and moans. You chance a peek, and watch the spire tilt. Barely a few degrees on a structure that tall makes it looks on the brink of collapse, but then it groans to a halt, swaying briefly and flashing magenta. A wave of the pink color rushes out across the area, scattering some of the smaller shards on the force wave. You duck and cover your head, but it isn’t much more forceful than a surprise breeze.

The shadows suddenly recede, bubbling around the tight perimeter of the area in erratic motions that make it difficult to determine how deep the wall goes. It shifts so much it could be half a foot to clear the shadows, or it could be ten yards. Tooth zips up to you, swords drawn, she leans up against your back, watching on her side.

A calm washes over the area. The shadows burble in their hordes, and the fearlings lean out to leer and gnash their teeth your direction. But they don’t come any closer, only reaching out stubby claws and short tendrils in what becomes very predictable fakeouts.

Too predictable. Too quiet. Too many shadows enveloping most of your vision.

The itch in your shoulders returns for a moment as you find your vision softening and going a little fuzzy the more you meet the fearlings’ hollow eyes. They get bigger and bigger, but are hardly any more intimidating. The itch eventually becomes part of the other, equally as regular tangible skitterings across your skin every day. If anything, the clear parts of your skin feel wrong. What a horrible way to go about life: an uncomfortable flesh suit wrapping itself around your thriving sinew and potential.

This train of thought stops in its tracks as Toothiana’s voice calling your name cuts through the silent din. She wrenches you back, away from where you’ve been inching closer to the wall of darkness. The itch is back in full force, now, as foreign and gross as ever. You take a deep breath.

“You okay?” Tooth asks.

“Yeah,” you reply, coughing through your dry mouth. The shadows just sit there, churning and laughing.

“Tooth,” you say to her. Out of the corner of your eye, you see her head turn to you. “Are there plenty of large spire shards over there?”

“Yes. The ground is littered with them, but I’m not letting my girls touch them.”

“Good. There’s, like, ten containers in my bag. I need at least three filled with as many pieces of crystal as you can get.”

She reaches over, rummaging through your bag until you hear a few bottles clink together.

“I’m going to head for the spire,” she says.

“I’ll back up a bit to cover you.”

As soon as you start moving, the perimeter tightens. You pause Kidra only a few yards in, turning to check that Tooth makes it to the spire in one piece. When you look back, the shadows have also stopped their advance. A few fairies flank you, chirping in a pattern that sounds like a song. Like a cadence march. Regardless, their chirping gets louder, and they start singing in a round.

There’s a bunch of noise, like glass shards moving around. You feel like you shouldn’t be able to hear it so clearly, especially over the warbling around you. For all the good the desert around you is doing, the air is damp and squelching all of the noise except for what’s right next to you and a jagged undertone that rips and folds and stutters across itself. It’s a digital glitch-like sound, like the last few moments of a distorted song before a laptop bluescreens.

“One container,” Tooth calls. The line advances.

 _We shouldn’t try to collapse the spire,_ you think. There’s too much risk now. You need to collect the samples and teleport out ASAP.

“Two.” The line advances again. She calls a third, and you can feel the shadows’ excitement. But they don’t rush.

You turn to call out to Tooth, to say you’ve changed your mind and that’ll be enough and that you should just go. But then a bit of static breaks through the un-noise. She pauses in her gathering, reaching down to the communication orb. She lifts it, tweaks something. It remains garbled. She grunts and slaps it against her other hand, and Jack’s shaking voice filters through.

“—Another has been… taken.” There’s a pause, and he repeats the message. He repeats it again.

You lock eyes with Tooth, a little comforted to see the whites of her eyes nearly overtaking the violet irises. You didn’t want to be the only one terrified. She glances down at the device, and you can see it trembling in her own shaky hand. The fairies around you had stopped their song or chant to listen in on the message, and one of them tries to restart the tune, but all of them sputter out.

“We have to go. Now,” you whisper, though it still carries across the way.

“Not yet,” Tooth replies.

She flits back to you, dumps a handful of containers into your bag, and then keeps fishing around. The low distortion sound from earlier gets the least bit louder, the least bit more haphazard. The shadows swirl, moaning and laughing even harder. Tooth swears next to you and then holds her hand out in front of your face.

“Give it to me.”

“Give what to—”

“You know exactly what I mean, and you need to give it to me right now so I can crush these shadows barehanded.”

The absolute fury holding your gaze to her glare almost makes you give the amplified Spring up immediately. But you shake your head.

“Too dangerous. I haven’t tested it—”

“But you brought it.”

“No.”

“Please,” she hisses. “Don’t let them get away with this. Not again. Not like Alisah.”

The shadows chitter, and images of those chaotic moments from the lair jump to the forefront of your mind. The Nightmare Man, leading Koz’s hand toward sure corruption, arcing its finger down toward Alisah before you step in. You’re quite sure that, at the very least, huffing the amplified Spring would help overcome all that. But…

No. This isn’t the way to go about it. Just thinking about the untapped potential makes you intrigued and excited in ways you haven’t felt in decades. But uneasiness chases that familiar euphoria, and uneasiness compounded by the whine in your ear and the itch crawling around your back.

You take a sharp inhale, turn Kidra, and whistle. You shove Tooth away, hauling out a string of grenades and a tub of the sand and yelling, “Stop using my great-granddaughter as a guilt trip!”

Kidra bolts the direction you point them: straight for the spire. Tooth screams behind you, and you can hear her wings beating against themselves as she tries to catch up.

Tooth wants this thing downed? Then _fine._ You’ll down it using proper means.

That’s when the shadows make their move, rupturing the eerie silence into desolate panic as you dash over the small area. Did they know something this was going to happen? Were they just biding their time until you two let your guards down?

Irrelevant.

Kidra slices through a few tendrils with their foreclaws, and snaps at a few more with their jaws. A slew of individual fearlings swarm out from the shadow masses, swinging claws that measure a full quarter of their height. You close your eyes as Kidra plows through them, launching several over your head. Once you have yourself enough back together, you slap the next one with a bullet of amplified dreamsand for good measure, even though their corpse becomes a wisp as it passes over you.

Tooth still shrieks behind you, gaining as you fight off the shadows.

Upon getting right next to the spire, you hop off of Kidra, trying not to land in too many of the shards. They crunch beneath your boots, and on impulse you stoop to grab the largest one within reach. The resonant hum and whine is still there, and a twitch at your shoulder has you holding the crystal at arms length. But it doesn’t burn, doesn’t threaten to eat away at your flesh or body or mind. A fact you file away for later, back in your lab.

You whistle and direct Kidra to slash the base of the spire with their claws. Shallow gashes appear along the lowest three feet, but they’re neither deep enough nor severe enough to make much of a difference.

Tooth screams and calls your name. You ignore her, as she’ll catch up sooner than later, given she’s much faster than you.

Sooner comes and goes. You only realize when the mass of fearlings once again recedes back to the perimeter, laying the not-quite silence over you again. Complete silence. No screaming, shrieking, or the buzzing of wings. Perhaps the low, near-inaudible crackling of a walkie-talkie.

“Tooth?” you say, turning, trembling fingers full of grenades and some spare ingredients.

She hovers only a few yards from you. Her wings aren’t moving, and what little light her feathers catch doesn’t reflect the lustrous shimmers that normally permeate each individual barb. Her violet glare is the only thing recognizable of her. She chokes out your name through her grit teeth, struggling to hold her hand out, reaching for the determined Spring.

“I can’t hold it back from my psyche forever,” she says. “Not as I am right now.”

You hold your hand over the opening of your quiver. One of her hands jolts up to her sword, and her eyes widen, her breathing quickens. She looks at you again.

“Hurry! Please.”

You summon the amplified Spring to your hand, but don’t drag it out of the quiver quite yet. The uncanny warmth tickles the edges of the container. The barest hint of created determination presses as much as it can against your palm.

“We’ll get out of this, I promise,” she says, clenching her fingers around a hilt, fighting against the movement of drawing the sword. “One way or another, we’re getting to Thera, and this spire is coming down—Watch out!”

The shadows swoop around the both of you, a tendril making its way around Tooth’s arm, and several more reaching out to your shoulders. You slip away, only getting ushered closer to Tooth, the area around you growing thinner and thinner. The shadows blot out the sky, and although there wasn’t much to see to begin with even the comfortable familiarity of an overcast sky vanishes, and you’re left in complete darkness.

Something slices into your arm. You scream.

“Sorry!” Tooth yells, grunting. The light tickle of her feathers brushes against you, but you cannot see her form against the darkness. Instinctively, you bring your hands up to guard against another strike. The amplified Spring is still in your hand, and once it finally leaves the safety of the quiver, the glow cracks through the shadows. It’s just enough to see Tooth’s sword chop down at you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what a week. time to breathe a little more easily now before we get back to work. [have a tumblr](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	67. Mere Anarchy

Once upon a time, Kozmotis heard the story of Ariadne. The daughter of King Minos, she betrayed her father by helping the upstart Theseus navigate his way through the labyrinth housing the Minotaur. Theseus killed the monster and spirited Ariadne away, as he had promised, until he abandoned her on an island some time later.

She had helped him survive a deathtrap with nothing more than enchanted thread, and that was the thanks she received.

He tries not to read too much into it as he scrambles over the roads, keeping one eye on the goose and Sanderson’s glow, and the other on the squirrely trail Rina’s silver tether takes him through. Easter may as well be here, for all the excitement and anticipation the evening is bringing, though he wagers that North and the rabbit may double back to this place once the rest get the situation under control. Belief is belief, after all, and they won’t squander a chance at any solitary drip of it.

Her trail tells a story, though he can’t bring himself to call it a tragedy. Every so often, he gets bursts of feelings from the thread. It’s difficult to tell at first that’s what they are, but the more attuned he becomes, the easier it is to separate out his own emotions from the bond with Rina. Most of her flashes are short smatterings of anxiety and nervousness, but as his hour or so of travel drags on, there are louder, sharper bursts of absolute calm and curiosity.

Suddenly, not too terribly far ahead of him, the goose and Sanderson glide in for a landing. They disappear from his view, and he scrambles to follow, losing concentration on the tether. He manages to share enough brain power between the two in order to keep the faintest hint of the thread glowing, and as he approaches a familiar ridge overlooking the cinder cone, Sanderson darts up to the road and waves him over.

“And turn that off!” he snaps, pointing to the thread.

“I will not!” Kozmotis retorts. He shuffles into the small area, sticking closer to Jack than the others. “This is how I know she’s alive and well. Look.”

He points over to the cone, where the glittering spire is just visible at the bottom. 

“I tell you we’re definitely walking into a trap, and you put on a whole signal for them?” Jack shakes his head. “I hope you had some sort of plan to go along with that, otherwise you’re dumber than I thought.”

“Forgive me for being worried about a child taken by the shadows!”

“That’s a first.” The goose girl averts her eyes as he glares over, and she combs her fingers through her pet’s feathers more aggressively. Sanderson interrupts as Kozmotis makes to reply.

“Enough, all of you. We have to focus.” He shifts over to the open ridge, watching the scene for a moment.

“These shadows seem more put together than the ones in Antarctica,” Jack mutters.

“That’s because there’s definitely a Nightmare Man directing their every motion,” Kozmotis replies.

“Okay, but there was also one at the south pole, so what’s the diff?”

“The ‘diff’ is that we’re a much more likely threat to this spire. There are children here, thus you all frequent the area as well. Were you even paying attention when I said why we had to ambush Antarctica first?”

Jack shrugs. “It worked itself out. We got the samples, and now we need some from here _and_ to rescue two kids if we can.”

“We must,” Kozmotis hissed. “We will save her.”

The others look over to him. He ignores the stares for a moment, and then glares back, only to find empty, angry gazes. Jack and Sanderson, shake their heads side to side. The goose girl, meanwhile, has tears at the edges of her eyes, and from the way she grips her hands on the goose’s bill, she’s as much holding her pet back as she is herself.

“Make no mistake,” she says, grinding her teeth. “We will do our absolute best to rescue her _and_ the boy. I know from several personal experiences that it can be done.” She takes a deep breath. “But you will consider the fact that not every child who goes into the shadows comes back. At the very least, they do not always come back unscathed.”

The Santoff Claussen children, caged in iron at the center of the Earth. The goose girl herself, trapped in a self-sustaining whirlwind of nightmares, saved only by sheer luck and a knight’s sacrifice. Alisah, still affected months after the ordeal in his lair, according to Jordan.

He blinks, looks away, and clenches his fist. The thread fades.

“We must…”

“Then help us form a plan,” Jack says. “First of all, what’re we up against?”

“Numerous fearlings and one Nightmare Man.”

“Cool. What are they capable of?”

“As much as you’ve already seen. On the one hand, they’ll benefit from not having to work under a full moon, where the shadows are disadvantaged. On the other hand, it is still, technically, daytime, so their powers are hardly peaking.” He sighs. The others nod a few times, digesting the information. “And it's as my partner said before: dreamsand is quite effective against the black sand and shadows, though they are almost as effective against it in return.”

“Any chance we can take down the spire itself with that we have?” Jack looks around. “Sandy could conjure giant dreamsand creations, of course, but I don’t know if that’s a guaranteed way to destroy it.”

“Judging by how difficult breaking off a few spikes of the Antarctica spire was, it’s made of hardy materials.”

“Which means?”

Kozmotis sputters. “What do you want from me? I’m no scientist. I cannot tell you the hows and whys of these things!”

“Loo!”

The goose girl points toward the cone, and they all stop to watch. The fluctuating perimeter of roiling fearlings pulses back and forth like a wave, opening and lowering in such a way that they can more easily see through the masses. A tall, thin cut of a shadow lingers near the base of the spire. Two shorter objects flank its sides, one of which it has a grip on. The other swipes and reaches for a few shadows about its own size, batting at them.

“I’m gonna go take a closer look,” Jack says, rising on a breeze. Sanderson yanks him back by his ankle. “What the heck!”

“We know exactly what we’re going to find over there. Don’t try anything too fancy, just map out where things are. And try not to lead them straight here.”

“All right, all right.”

Jack swivels his head back and forth for a moment before letting another gentle wind carrying him. He skims just above the ground, darting back and forth, staying below the shrubbery as much as he can. Thankfully, even if the fearlings can see well in the dark, they should still have trouble separating Jack’s form from the light color of the land. He’s not invisible, but it’s better than glowing under the brightness of the moon. Kozmotis looks at his hand again, thinking he might bring up the tether. If their stealthy approach is completely gone regardless, then it shouldn’t hurt to show Jack exactly where Rina is.

He starts summoning the silver, but he barely finalizes the connection when a flat of sand slaps his wrist.

“Ah!” he cries, shaking it out. “Why?”

Sanderson just glares back at him. “You’re a renown strategist. Act like it.”

“I haven’t been for a long time and you know it.”

“Could have fooled me with all the work you’ve been doing lately.”

“What is your problem, hm?” Kozmotis finally snaps and towers over him. “What do you really want from me? Or are you still hoping for someone a millennium dead who you never truly knew in the first place?”

“You could be just as great.”

“Yes, I think I could. But would that ever be enough to satisfy your nostalgia? You’ll go on chasing the memory of Kozmotis Pitchiner for eternity at this rate. If anything, I’d have thought you’d encourage his return by telling him where he can find the child he thought long dead!”

“Shush!”

The goose girl peers out to the spire, one hand and foot on her goose, ready to spring. Jack makes a circle around the spire. The shadows piles upon each other, each trying to make it to the top of a large enough heap to take a swing at him. He rises a little higher, staff starting to glow.

“Not yet!” Sanderson hisses.

Jack makes two more passes around the area, and then flies right into the flat gray of the clouds, disappearing for a moment before descending miles north, the glow of magic fading out. The shadows spread over the lip of the cinder cone, stretching out in all directions for a good quarter of a mile or so. They don’t quite make it far enough to discover their hiding place, but it’s a close call.

Minutes pass, no one daring to speak in case whatever luck keeps them hidden dispels. The shadows finally retreat, still eager and bubbling and laying an underscore of death rattle laughter to the stagnant ambiance of the late afternoon.

Twenty more minutes pass until Jack returns, approaching from the south. He skids down, softly crashing into the goose’s side to stop. He collapses to his back, gulping down air. The goose girl helps him sit up and hands him some water. He freezes a small icicle of it and gnaws on it for a minute or so. Then he speaks.

“Sorry. Had to fly around the whole island to make sure I was hidden.” He takes a crunch of ice. “Whole perimeter is thick shadows, natch. And they’re all on high alert, even before I went over. They’re waiting.” He looks at Kozmotis. “They’ve got the girl and the boy next to the Nightmare Man, about ten yards to the southeast side of the spire, which is well into the area from the lip of the cone. And the spire itself is pulsing at the base. Feels horrible to be near it, even more than the Antarctica one.

“Anyway, the Nightmare Man has a hold on the girl. Couldn’t tell if she was still conscious, but…” He smiles. “They haven’t corrupted her.”

“Yet,” the goose girl whispers.

“So, we’ve got ready shadows at the bottom of a deep cone that only most of us can escape easily from.” He glances at the others, a small, heavy ball of nervousness weighing his stomach down as he realizes he’s the only grounded one. “Did you see if the boy was commanding shadows to do what he wanted?”

“He was certainly trying to yell at them. Weirdly, even with his deal, he still couldn’t see me.”

 _That… might be useful, actually._ He thinks for a moment. The shadows will know all of them are there, but if the Dimitris child can only see Kozmotis…

“So we’ll need you to help keep the shadows away as much as possible while we go for the children.” Sanderson sighs. “Are you sure you’re up for more distractions? You’re already tired from the flight—”

“Or, I could run distraction while you three back me up,” Kozmotis says. He doesn’t wait for them to ask or to regard him in pitiful silence again. “The boy can’t see Jack, and I have reason to believe he won’t be able to see you, either.” He nods to the goose girl.

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a hunch.”

The cogs in his mind squeal as they spin, greased with panic. He lays out a rushed joke of a plan that is just coherent enough that it might serve as a good foundation for further improvisation as the need arises.

The goose girl doesn’t need so much convincing to let him endanger his life, though she does make a scoffing noise at one point. It’s such an out of place reaction that he considers her for a second, but as always, she either ignores his direct eye contact or lets her eyes glaze over to stare right through him. Still, she shakes her head at his last statement, silently disagreeing even though he thought she’d be at least neutral on the whole idea. Oh well.

They part ways, heading for the locations they must haunt for awhile. Jack and the goose girl fly low to the south. Sanderson floats off, giving Kozmotis the most pitiful, hopeful look he’s seen from the small spirit in a long time. But Sanderson fails to hide that spark of excitement that has been growing throughout the plan.

“Don’t look for him like that,” Kozmotis says. “You’re never going to find him.”

The Sandman scowls, closes his eyes, and shoots off in an arc toward the east. Once his glow disappears, Kozmotis reaches out to the thread tied to his pinky finger. The tether reappears along the ground, shining as ever, and a shiver of glee vibrates through it. He follows it, striding as tall as he can over the rocky ground.

The hum of darkness starts low, but it slips past his ears and starts buzzing around his head louder and louder as he approaches. He reaches the lip of the cinder cone, keeping yards away from the wall of shadows. The tether around his finger flies right through it, pushing the shadows away so that they don’t come closer than an inch radius around the part that pierces through.

“Bring her to me,” Kozmotis says.

The shadows start laughing, and he hears his words echoing down the cone, each iteration more mocking than the last. He tries to keep tall, despite the atmosphere getting to him the more he stays nearby. It takes minutes, perhaps an hour, but the shadows quiet their chattering and part for the Nightmare Man to loom over the top.

It carries Rina in one gigantic hand like a ragdoll, holding her up mostly by one shoulder. Her head lolls over toward him, and he can see her blank eyes skim over everything in front of her until they rest on him. Even then, she barely twitches, and the only way he knows she sees him at all is the thrill of relief that jolts through the tether connecting at her chest.

Dimitris, on the other hand, rides proudly on the Nightmare Man’s shoulder, grinning down at Kozmotis.

Good. He has the boy’s attention.

“Told you he’d come here,” he says to it. It barely nods.

“Dimitris!” he calls amiably. “I see you’re well.”

The boy sniffs in his direction and then turns away, reaching for a nearby fearling that leans a little too far out of the mass of shadows. It jerks at the boy’s touch, reaching back to swipe at him. But then a shudder ripples out from the Nightmare Man’s visage, making the fearling freeze. Dimitris grabs hold of its neck and examines it all around. He leans over to the Nightmare Man and whispers something into what he must suppose is its ear. It shrugs, and the fearling squeals as it shrinks, becoming no larger than an action figure. The boy grins even wider. Soon he’ll have no trouble fully adopting the familiar facade all fearlings possess.

He’s seen this whole process before, long ago when taking children was a more common practice he held. Children like Dimitris—painfully lonely to the point of arrogance, bullying, and self-destruction—are so eager to please the one person they believe think highly of them. They’re the easiest to target because they think they’re the exception to the corruption. The promise of becoming a fearling prince or princess and the implied rulership over the shadows, being favored by darkness, is far too tempting for those suffering the volatile mix of neglect and egotism.

“Kozmotis…” the Nightmare Man finally croaks out. “Welcome…”

“I should feel more welcome if you hand over that girl you’re manhandling and allow us to leave in peace.”

It laughs, throwing its head back and trembling in the crudest lampooning of human laughter. Dimitris laughs, too, trying to imitate the The sound makes Rina curl up and grimace until her eyes completely slide away from what’s in front and around her. Kozmotis nearly drops the tether as a horrible wave of despair overcomes him. But he steels himself, especially as the signal stone in his pocket warms against his side.

He closes his eyes for a moment and then re-opens them, smirking in Dimitris’ direction. The boy prods at the miniature fearling.

“I’m surprised you’re not riding your own nightmare,” Kozmotis calls out to him. He looks up, question on his face. 

“Trade… For her…?” The Nightmare Man swoops closer, turning to keep some distance between him and Dimitris. It yanks Rina up a smidge, and Kozmotis, try as he might, winces at the movement. It lowers her gently, contorting its face into its version of a smile.

Dimitris leans so he can see him and says, “I can’t make a nightmare. Yet. Yet!”

Kozmotis holds his hands out. “That’s the first thing I always taught the children I took in years ago. It’s quite simple. So simple plenty conjured their first on day one.”

 _There it is,_ Kozmotis thinks as Dimitris’ curiosity falls into embarrassment, which he tries to recover into something more neutral. _No, you’re not so special anymore, are you?_

The boy stops listening and turns his attention back to the mini fearling, the out to the masses of shadows. The Nightmare Man, lifts him off his shoulder and passes him to the mob, which form a small stage for him to stand on. And the Nightmare Man shifts even closer to Kozmotis.

“Trade…?” it repeats more forcefully.

“I hardly believe you’re willing to hold up any sort of bargain, no matter how tempting the conditions.” Kozmotis shakes his head. “No, you’ll be handing me Ms. Rina, and then you will either escape to fail another day, or you’ll die here within the hour.”

There’s a soft muttering just behind the Nightmare Man, who is too busy swelling the fearlings around itself to look bigger to notice. It’s first mistake in this next series of actions. Dimitris believed enough in the Boogeyman—or feared him enough—that he was able to see Kozmotis at his weakest and lead his friends over as well. This type of child tends to brush off magics like ‘storytelling’ as too soft for their image. A being that brings his wildest desires to life in his dreams every night, however, is still something he’s likely to cling to.

Which is why, when the boy crows in triumph and sits on the back of a small, overly spiky nightmare, it’s Jack who makes the next move. A small bullet of ice shoots through the shadows, piercing the flank of Dimitris’ steed. The Nightmare Man jerks to look as it lets out a high-pitched whinny, one that Kozmotis can’t help but wince at.

The spooked horse fumbles around, kicking and rearing, making Dimitris cling on for dear life. It gets caught in the pull of gravity, and starts running back down the slope. Dimitris screams and grabs on to the nearest shadows, dragging a whole line of them down into the pit with him.

The mass of fearlings shudders, holes appearing in the perimeter as the Nightmare Man loses its tight hold over them. They sense one, bright source of immediate fear, and the rush is too great for them to remain obedient, much as the Nightmare Man tries. Kozmotis watches the wall thin, and he inches closer and closer. Finally, he steps just past the barrier and grabs hold of Rina’s arm. The Nightmare Man whirls around, reaching back its other clawed hand to swipe at him.

Kozmotis smirks, amused to think that it had forgotten the one trait all children share: the ability to get underfoot at the worst of time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> children can be pretty cool but man you gotta [watch](emilyparagraph.tumblr.com) em closely


	68. Memory Meets Determination

You tug backwards, trying to make Kidra move, but the saber slices across your torso. You want to think it’s just a mortal memory of pain that shoots a burning and tearing sensation across your front, but a liquid—some sort of immortal blood perhaps—stains the pieces of your shirt that aren’t gaping from the cut. And then your mind explodes into nothing but overlapping alarm bells alerting you over and over to the agony at your midsection.

“Sorry!”

Tooth’s voice shouts from somewhere nearby. Also nearby, something greenish twists in a serpentine manner, jutting a fang out to catch you again. This one catches you close to the juncture of your neck and shoulder, slicing way deeper than the one across your chest.

“Run! Move! Do _something!”_

Your body responds after you tell it to, heating up rapidly as if to try and cover the alternating pulses of flayed flesh rubbing against itself and the open air. Through the comforting green light, you manage to focus on Toothiana’s flailing form. Just beyond that, the light stops dead against the wall of darkness. The dome of shadows.

Oh.

Oh, you’re trapped.

The shadows press in even tighter, closing the amount of room you’re trying to make between yourself and Tooth. You don’t want to be near any of the walls; they exude misery and hopelessness and you can’t breathe properly. Maybe that’s just the gaping wound across you, the one still leaking the strange liquid with a smell threatening to turn your stomach inside out if the next swooping slice doesn’t cut it out of you first.

Kidra closes their mouth around your wrist and tugs you out of the way. But they tug too fast, and you bump right into them, tumble over, and finally catch a rest on what purports to be the ground. Something scrapes your palm, and when you look over, you see a spiderweb crack across the bottle of amplified Spring. A small jet of the green spews between some of the glass shards, right in the direction of your face. Despite it needing a few more moments to reach you, your body relaxes, and your mind clears. You feel like it’s gotten sharper, just as it had when you’d directly inhaled it days ago, but the small, logical part of your brain tries to remind you that this is just the placebo effect. The real thing will start soon enough. You hear your name.

“Are you okay?”

You manage to focus on Tooth long enough to see her once again struggling against her own sword. And that said sword is aiming directly at you.

“Well, you look conscious enough…” she mutters. She licks her lips. “Don’t panic about what I’m going to do next. But also don’t lose focus. One. Two. Three—“

She stops fighting and lets the sword drag her. It starts to pierce down toward your prone form, moving so fast it cuts the air into whistles. At the last second, Tooth flings her other hand over and slaps the flat of the blade, swerving it off-course.

It stabs into the ground millimeters from your head.

Tooth reaches with her free arm, lifting the bottle from your grasp, raising it above her head, and slamming it back down. You just manage to squeeze your vulnerable eye shut, a small scrape of glass shards crossing your eyelid. From the relative safety behind your lens, however, you watch Tooth curl over the spot where the bottle smashes.

You swear you hallucinate the thin, silver thread that briefly touches down over your chest and the faint scent of ancient, burning myrrh and musty pages that accompanies it. But it feels so familiar, and if this is the last thing you experience, you want it to be him.

“Koz?” you whisper. There’s no reply, only the sense of Kozmotis nearby, perhaps listening.

You can hold on for one more moment.

The sudden release of the Spring wafts over to you in no time, and then does the pain truly stop. Your mind truly clears. Your muscles regain mastery over themselves and your fingertips take on a greenish tinge, which becomes the only waning source of light as the cloud of Spring disappears.

“Hahahaha…”

Kidra steps over you, foreclaws coming dangerously close to slicing your side. You feel around in the darkness. And the new silence; true silence, though you can still feel the surrounding shadows trying to close in even further. But even they pause for what comes next.

“Hehahahaha!” Tooth laughs again.

You try to reach out to her, but can barely find Kidra in the dark, let alone your half-possessed companion.

“Tooth? Tooth are you okay?”

A feather-shaped light flares up on her shoulder, cutting through the shadows again. Then another feather lights. Another and another and another. The green, glowing feathers leave trails as she stands and flexes her formerly out-of-control arm. They’re similar trails to the ones radiating off her humming wings. It’s like the ghosting left behind from glow sticks or sparklers when they move too rapidly for human eyes to keep up, so it just animates into one continuous stream. It’s so rapidly bright that if determination was not also coursing through your body, you’re sure that it would have blinded you. Though, to be fair, you’re not sure how much you took in; the high will probably fade in a minute. 

From the way Toothiana wrenches her sword from the ground and draws her other one, she got an exponentially higher dose than either you or Bunny.

“Enjoying your final meal of fear?” she asks the shadows, turning in the air and glancing around at them all. Her voice is as calm as you feel, a soft lilt that has trace amounts of a whispering growl. “You should. And if you have any capacity for fear of your own, you should listen to that nagging voice inside your head currently telling you to run.”

She hesitates maybe one more second, before she takes a deep breath, curling in on herself. The light diminishes a fraction, and then it expands as she lets loose the most infectious, primal war scream.

The shadows flicker. And as the scream continues, the whole dome spasms apart, and you can see the tilting, flashing spire swaying above you once again.

She takes off.

You scramble from under Kidra, answering the call with your own scream, your fingertips flaring for a moment. Arrows find themselves at your fingertips over and over again, and you hardly have to draw back on the bowstring to make them shoot at Mach two. The gold-touched explosions the arrows produce are dull and weak compared with how you know they could be, how you know you could create them and improve them to be.

Like this. Like you, under the influence of the most amazing concoction that will allow you to rip the world in half.

You swing yourself onto Kidra, kicking them into motion to flank the spire opposite to Tooth. She’s already swinging at it, the sounds of metal scraping and clashing with stone reaching your ears.

_This is for_ them. Your heart pounds in your throat. _This is for the ones who can’t take revenge themselves._

You access an image you try not to think about too often: the circle of trees, constantly growing despite being held in the catacombs for so long. They way the rough, ancient bark of each still resembles the sister they once were. The spread vestiges of wings sprouting from each back, covered in moss and leaves and vines that would have erased the sisters long ago if you hadn’t rescued them one by one.

Though there are many more… You hate to think how many more you _couldn’t_ save from the encroaching wilds.

How you’ve wanted to talk to them over the years: possible aunts and cousins and friends your mother knew, but couldn’t bring you to see until it was too late. For her, for your father, and for the rest of your family cursed out of existence before you could carry on a real conversation with them.

Suddenly, the first time you ever completed a set of teeth flashes before you. And of course, just after, the glowing flash of a small, newborn fairy, looking so much like a hummingbird, but chirping in a language all their own. A language you share on instinct.

You can _speak_ with someone again, and you know how to make more so that the two of you will never be alone again. Will be even less alone once you exorcise this curse and free the Sisters of Flight once again—

Your brain tries to batter its way out of your skull, starting with the space above your right eye. The bile in your stomach follows suit, and you double over Kidra, rolling off their back as the crash lays you lower than the innermost core of the planet. Luckily, you manage to miss vomiting on Kidra’s back. You really don’t think they’d’ve appreciated that. But they appreciate you enough to scramble back towards you, dragging you by the arm out of the way of the crystal as you hear something shatter, something else crack, and then watch the spire lean and lean and lean.

The breeze it creates as it sails down and embeds itself in the dry earth washes lukewarm over your clammy, shivering form. A few of the crystals shatter from the main structure, shooting towards you at dangerous speeds.

But once again, Kidra steps in front of you, bellowing as the shrapnel pierces into their side. They turn for a second to roar in the direction of the pain, and you see their side looking like it caught a shotgun blast. More vomit acquaints itself with the Outback, but you drag yourself over to Kidra, trying to re-wet the inside of your mouth enough to thank them and promise the most exquisite treats you can find once you’re through this.

The images, no, the memories—Toothiana’s memories—still flash inside the parts of your mind that aren’t on fire. A cursed monkey man… cages… jewels in exchange for your, no, _her,_ peers’ teeth… a mob… sacrifice… death… loneliness.

She rises from behind the toppled base of the spire, still a soothing beacon against the writhing shadows. On the one hand, you can hardly parse anything coherent through the withdrawal, and you hope you recover before she goes through hers. On the other hand, the most sober thought you can muster is, _This is a war. A war they’ve been fighting for many times longer than I’ve been alive._

Of course she’d do anything to make a dent in her enemy’s plans.

The back of your mind churns in familiar anxiety, but you try to focus more on how awful you feel before the fearlings notice that train of thought. Though, as you squint through the migraine now fully possessing your skull, you see less of the darkness than before. Grunts of exertion make their way over to you, and then fizzling squeals.

You drag yourself to a stumbling position thanks to Kidra, and the new vantage point allows you to see Tooth whirling through the dwindling hordes of fearlings, her mini fairies back at her side and helping to kick the crap out of whatever threatens to come her way. Kidra gently drags you over, and the wind pushing against your body makes you once again realize that you were cut not too long ago. You gently reach down, trying not too unbalance yourself, regardless of if the planet is actually spinning this fast or not.

There’s a hint of pain as you reach for where you know the wound is, but the skin is fused together. You look down, gag, and then try again, slower. A shiny ridge of quickly disappearing scar tissue glows the faintest shade of green. You hook your fingers through your torn shirt.

_Yup. That’s a healing scar, all right. Oh, no, Katherine’s shirt…_

A firm grip lands on your shoulder. You take the next fifteen seconds to look up at Tooth, trying not to rattle yourself back into pain-blindness. Even with the caution, she’s difficult to look at, what with all the shimmering and ghost images she leaves behind with every twitch. You end up closing your eyes.

“Hey…” you think you say, “we should probably get to Thera real quick.”

“Yes,” she says, an extra reverb in her voice that rolls through you and makes you shiver.

She shuffles around through your bag, eventually drawing out what she needs. She says, “Thera,” and a warping sound breaks through the air, followed simultaneously by the light of the swirling vortex that just manages to slip through the thin skin of your eyelids.

“See what I mean?” she says, hoisting herself onto Kidra behind you. You can hear the ethereal shimmering echo itself through her voice, hear it emanating from her feathers like the high-pitched sound of electrical wires. “This will solve everything. You can finally free us from the constant attacks from the shadows.”

Her voice overlaps with another memory, one of your own this time.

_Your boss leans forward, saying, “See, what I mean? These are the results we’ve been looking for!”_

_He runs his fingers over the finalized formula. It’s only a few letters and subscripts away from the dieting sweetener it originally was, and you’re glad to see that disaster of a product completely wiped away with few visual changes. At least, when it’s laid out like this. Non-chemists and other scientists ignorant to chemical formulas won’t know or care about the nuances._

_You can continue putting food on the table. You can continue getting gifts for your family. You can continue living life as you always envisioned it to be, despite the horrific financial crises you saw before the age of thirty._

_“The military should get good use out of this,” you reply._

_“It’s inspired.”_

_“Anything to keep us all safe, right?”_

_“Yeah. Anything.”_

“Anything to lift curses and keep the kids safe,” Tooth whispers.

The dry soil smell of the Outback changes suddenly to the salty brine of sea air. You push through the withdrawal to land Kidra, unsure of what—if anything—you should say. How can you argue with that? How can you argue and say that just because you _can_ doesn’t mean you _should?_ In the face of planetary disaster?

That particular train of thought derails as a bright violet glow starts up, a high pitched whine revving up and churning through the wave of shadows you see growing and growing to the north of you. Tooth’s green glow flickers in your peripheral vision, and she kicks Kidra’s sides. To their credit, they merely grunt and refuse to move until you give a gentle nudge and soft whistle. They careen off, carrying you and her on their back: lonely cavalry to join the fray.

You almost don’t catch Toothiana say, “Congratulations on your first real taste of war.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy friday the 13th! bike, compliment, and [prescribe](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	69. Ceremony of Innocence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 69. nice :D

Kozmotis curls over Rina as the claw descends, weaving a shield of sliver around them for good measure. It doesn’t stop the Nightmare Man from piercing through it and catching him all along his side. Doesn’t stop it from scraping off a decent amount of skin and tearing his clothes and making him yell in shock. But it does slow it all for a moment. Just long enough for the others to start their parts of the ambush.

A screeching honk announces the goose and girl. They swoop overhead, casting a dim shadow, and after a moment of relative quiet, she shouts out in that ancient language. The resulting shockwave has him bracing against the ground. The Nightmare Man apparently did not have as much foresight, as it shoots away for a moment. It manages to retain its grip on Rina, however, and both she and he are dragged along for a second. Rina croaks out a cry, though he’s not sure if it’s of fear or pain.

The blinding pain subsides enough that Kozmotis can finally see the scene again.

Dimitris is swiveling his head around and around, failing to contain his expression into the smug facade he’d been wearing this whole time. Jack is on his tail, egging the horse on with a few more well-placed jolts of cold to its flank. He simultaneously keeps the fearlings chasing the boy at bay, though it won’t be long before they’re overwhelmed by the eager wave of shadows from the other side closing in.

The goose girl continues to batter the area closer to the spire with shout after shout, keeping the base of the odd crystal clear enough for when they all swoop in to try and collapse the whole thing. A bunch of fearlings hesitate on the ground, what passes for their heads following her circling, one or two getting up enough gumption to take a leap and a swipe. The goose deftly avoids them all, even kicking one down into the crystal spikes where it dissipates on impact.

Something tugs at Rina’s body, and Kozmotis refocuses on the Nightmare Man in front of him before it can rip her away. He takes a deep breath and lashes threads all over her, trying to cocoon her in safety and break its grip. As the silver washes over her, the pallor of her face eases up and a tinge of red returns to her cheeks. It’s not enough to make the glaze in her eyes go away, but it’s a start, and the main thread winding around and around gives a small cough of relief through the connection.

“I’ve got you, Ms. Rina,” he says, hoping she can hear.

It would be an understatement to say that the Nightmare Man is less than pleased.

It snarls and wrenches Rina’s shoulder back, using its other hand to slash at the threads that have wound around her and are continuing to swarm over it. The threads curl up and down the too-long fingers, leaving indents where the silver pushes into its false skin—more like a membrane keeping a liquid whole—and the thinnest ones press so hard he can see the membrane starting to split. Kozmotis focuses as much as he can with being surrounded by mountains of shadows and an angry dark being once again reaching back for a strike into him.

It lets out a hideous, groaning wail as it winds up, and his vision tunnels. The atmosphere drains until he’s watching the world spin on without him. The area turns black and white, and the Nightmare Man is the only thing large and looming enough to capture his vision and attention. The long claws rotate around each other until they come together to form a broad, sharp point.

It snaps its arm forward, faster than Kozmotis can register the start of the movement. So fast that as soon at the tip touches a point between his eyes, he’s just begun to pull away.

Those claws do not pierce right through his skull, however. They linger in that desaturated landscape, the point not quite poking enough to start to cut.

“Daddy, help me!”

His daughter.

No, no. No this is definitely a part of his scrambled memories. Thoughts and emotions the Nightmare Man is drawing from the deepest, darkest recesses of his soul.

_And he can’t help but watch as Kozmotis Pitchiner, grieving father and husband, plasters on a false, yet charismatic smile on at a gala not a month after the raid on his house. The clamoring throngs shout his name, wish him well, tell him he should be proud of himself. The news hasn’t yet spread widely of what happened, and he begs the presses and army to keep it that way._

_He’s a beacon. The people of the Golden Age depend on his sanity and strength to keep their own. Early in his career, he made the mistake of telling a child that he was afraid; not too long after, that city had been razed by shadows. No matter what his superiors told him, no matter how much proof he was shown that the shadows had been a threat for far longer than that moment, he cannot help but continue to connect the loss of the city with the smudge of fear and weakness he implanted into one of the most vulnerable._

_He’s here to protect. He’s here to provide hope._

He’s currently watching Rina being unwound from those silver threads and starting to drift away on a pallet of darkness.

“Fail… and fail again…” the Nightmare Man growls, pressing on that point harder until it cuts through the thin skin of his brow, still locking him into the torture of memories he may or may not have actually experienced in the ways he sees them play out.

It keeps laughing, tugging at the last few silver threads around Rina. There’s a whistling sound, and then a golden flash of light cuts through its wrist, making dots appear in front of Kozmotis’ sight as well. There’s a muffled thump just in front of him, and when Kozmotis gets control of his sight back, he sees Sanderson there, struggling to hold up Rina where she’s fallen. His teeth chatter and he shivers despite the mild weather. Fear and cold are strange bedfellows, indeed. Sanderson watches him, nods, and then starts to float off, easily carrying the girl once he regains his bearings.

Kozmotis almost reaches out to stop him and carry Rina himself, but he shakes his head and re-centers, redirecting his gaze and ire to the flailing creature just out of arm’s reach.

The Nightmare Man bellows as it clutches its wrist. A sheen of gold with iridescence crackling around it tops off the stump that used to be its hand. That won’t stop it for long, and Kozmotis won’t be surprised if it reforms the damn thing in the next few minutes. But hearing the soulless demon scream and watching it write in pain reignites the fire of his center, and he draws out his sword from its sheath.

“Kozmotis!” The goose swoops overhead, the goose girl yelling his name before turning and shouting away another wave of shadows threatening to break over the small area. “We’ve got her! Let’s go!”

She yells through gritted teeth, making eye contact with him. They hold it for a second before he breaks it, turning to point toward the Nightmare Man with his sword. By now, it’s shrugged off the pain, holding its intact hand out and directing the shadows to swirl up and about. The goose hovers closer, nearly knocking him down with the strong gusts its flapping wings create.

“We need to get to the spire,” she says. “At least wrap a rope around the saddle and hang off of—”

A wall bursts up between them, and the goose flaps manically, nearly jolting her off. Kozmotis immediately slashes at the fearlings that bolt from the darkness, drawing up a massive weaving cord of tethers. The circle around him cuts thinner and thinner, however. In seconds, the claw-covered walls slash at him continuously while laughing and imitating his cries of pain. A bunch of them jolt out from behind him, piercing clear through his shoulder, crushing and dislocating everything. The sword drops from his limp hand, and the shadows immediately swallow it. Kozmotis manages to remain standing, but his knees shake and threaten to give out all the same.

The air prickles. The hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up, and a sharp smell much like ozone wafts across him like a slap to the face. One second later, he finds himself on the ground, a high-pitched whine the only thing droning in his ears besides the frantic sound of his panting. Residual vibrations of force bounce back and forth along the ground, and there’s the least echo of someone yelling something in the back of his mind. The shadows are mostly gone, only a few straggling fearlings twitching and darting to and fro, rubbing their palms over the sides of their heads.

A different sort of shadow descends toward him, and the next thing he knows, something grabs hold of his collar, yanking him up to the sky. He thrashes to stop the light choking sensation, and there’s a muffled noise to his left, inaudible above the ringing. He’s thrown down onto something hard and moving, something that smells of leather and wood. He blinks, and his eyes finally stop spinning enough for him to catch on that he’s in the goose’s saddle. The goose girl hovers nearby, watching him and saying something he can’t quite hear, wiping her other hand frantically on her coat. They lock eyes, the ringing dying down a bit.

“—okay?” She waves her hand in front of his face. “Are. You. Okay?”

He nods, leaning on his arm to get up, only to scream when his shoulder gives out, tossing him to the saddle again. She helps him sit up, and then pulls away, wiping her hands again. A flash of violet light and a dull noise that must be louder than he can hear at the moment catches her attention, she pulls herself back up to the reins, yelling a “Hold on!” he just manages not to miss.

She takes the bird into a roll, and if he’d been a moment slower with the tethers, he’d be plummeting back to the ground. Once she straightens out her pet, Kozmotis takes the opportunity to tie a bunch of threads around his shoulder. She glances back at him as he does so, once again asking if he’s all right.

“Yes!” he calls back, finally able to hear most of everything again, though a drone persists for the time being. They ascend high above the cone, clearing the lip of the bowl. She has the goose hover, surveying the battleground. He licks his lips. “Thank… Thank you, Katheri—“

“‘Goose girl’ is fine with me,” she snaps. There’s another burst of the violet and she glides them nearer, until they’re about to pass over the spire itself. She recites something to herself, and from what he can pick up, it’s a list of power words she’s choosing from.

“Thank you,” he says anyway, “Ms. Goose.”

She meets his eyes again, a determined fury burning out of them he’s seen only a few times. But she cocks her head and nods. And then she unleashes a scream in a language ancient enough to make his head hurt again for a moment. When he looks out across the spire, however, there’s not a single fearling in a thirty yard radius of it.

There is, however, a Nightmare Man harrying the Sandman, who struggles to keep Rina safe from where Dimitris and his now-tame nightmare circle them.

“Bring me in!” he yells.

Once in an acceptable range, he flings himself out of the saddle, pushing tethers out to create a soft enough nest at the bottom of the slope. He rolls, choking on a yelp as the pressure on his shoulder shifts everything around. He shrugs it off and weaves a rope of thread, letting it wind above him like a snake until he coils it back for a strike. Jack lands next to him.

“Weird kid still doesn’t seem to know I’m here, but his horse does. Now what?”

A wave of violet ripples out from the spire, and it pulses up and down its height. A bead of light so dull magenta it wraps around to blinding collects at the top.

“Fuck!” Jack says, clenching his teeth. He waves his hands at the sky. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

Under other circumstances, Kozmotis would laugh upon hearing the frost spirit break down enough to swear, but that sentiment describes the situation perfectly. He’d heard the others talk about the beam that shot off on the equinox, how it built into a stark bead of light, dragging what the believe to be energy from the other spires to Thera before shooting it—and apparently the eldritch horror—out of the atmosphere. He was too busy nearly dying to have paid attention. But as soon as the horrible screech like electronic feedback begins, it pings a vague recollection from when he lay on the dirty floor of the abandoned garage, desperately trying to keep himself alive.

At the sound, Dimitris shakes his head, closing his eyes. He then reopens them, grins again, and jabs his heels into the nightmare’s sides. It huffs out a token resistance, but obeys, galloping right at Sanderson. Kozmotis takes off, heading for the same point. He can’t help but jostle his shoulder, but he forces himself to keep at top speed regardless. It will heal soon enough; a little pain now and then clears the mind.

Dimitris gets there first, and his nightmare sinks its fangs into Sanderson’s leg, drawing a harsh scream from him. Jack darts ahead of Kozmotis, stretching an arm out to grab Rina as Sanderson loses his physical grip and quickly creates a tendril of sand to hoist her up and away. Kozmotis drags every ounce of his stretch to the fore of himself, gathering yet another mass of strings and brandishing as far ahead of him as he can manage, aiming for the boy or his horse.

The whine peaks, a beam bursts from the tip of the spire and travels up and out, and a wave of violet force pulses out, scattering them all. Dimitris yelps as he hits the floor of the pit, his nightmare dissipated. Jack misses Rina’s arm, and she tumbles to the ground as the sand around her vanishes because Sanderson collapses, too. He clutches his leg desperately and summons a handful of dreamsand, slapping it to the black puncture wounds and their expanding edges. He lifts his hand, sees only gold, and sighs. A squawk nearby tattles on the fact that Ms. Goose was tossed away for a moment as well.

And Kozmotis lands hard. The air escapes him, and his lungs can’t remember how to work for a solid fifteen seconds. He sucks in a new breath and sits up as that terrible laugh, that clammy dread, that uncanny disorientation force their ways through his pores and spread out under his skin, and then deeper.

The Nightmare Man holds Rina high above the ground in a crisscrossing web of shadows, forcing her slackened face backward to face it. It has its recovering stump against the spire, and a violet gleam forks from it through the body of the Nightmare Man like veins.

Kozmotis struggles to his feet. He reaches out, gathering what few tethers he can manage after all the exhaustion, and whips them at the creature. It bats them away with a shadow easily.

“Should… Have… Traded…” it growls. “When… You had… A chance…”

It plunges a single claw between Rina’s eyes. From that single touch, dark markings swirl out, curling intricately in a way he’s seen many times. Most recently on his partner’s neck and shoulders. The dark swirls cover Rina’s skin entirely, and then they pool outward, sliding deeper into her being to overtake it in its entirety.

Kozmotis freezes in place. Shaking, panting, pleading with himself to _save her._ She’s _right there. Do not let this happen_ again, _you incompetent fool!_ Rina’s face scrunches up, mouth gaping in the image of a scream.

He cannot focus on anything except how absolutely no sound exits her body anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 69. not [nice](emilyparagraph.tumblr.com) :C


	70. Nightlight, Bright Light

Even after pushing Kidra harder and harder to go as fast as they can, you don’t arrive to the spire until after the beam goes off again. And at that, Tooth takes off, beside you one moment and only the remnants of her glowing trail fading next to you in the next. But another howl of determined rage echoes across the land, and whatever amplified Spring remains in your fingertips flares one last, impotent time.

Upon arriving to the spire, the melee is already thick and the atmosphere increasingly heavy. Before entering the fray yourself, you take the opportunity to wipe a bit of the salve across your shoulders, hoping to prevent the sensation of the spreading mark as you get closer to the crystallized darkness. The last time you forced yourself to look, it was like you wore a skintight capelet of black, asymmetrically hanging halfway down your back, curling swirls like lace decorating the edges of the infection. As soon as you rub it over where you can reach, the whine that had taken residence in your skull as soon as you teleported dulls. Dulls enough that you almost wish for it back when the migraine of withdrawal hits you after.

You wish you’d brought water. Part of you is still so human that you _need_ to drink something after expending so much energy and rushing so hard. It’ll pass; it won’t feel great, but it’ll pass, and you can’t pause now. Forcing yourself to focus, you dart your eyes from person to person, finally seeing Koz near the spire itself.

He holds up one hand towards the Nightmare Man approaching him. A fearling hangs in the air not too far away. His hand sputters forth a sheen of silver, but fails to conjure any actual threads. The Nightmare Man simply glides closer.

Holding on to the vestige of strength Tooth’s scream gave you, you whistle Kidra down into the pit, holding your breath for as long as you can to prevent breathing in the scent of decay and resignation.

You almost skim right past what you recognize as a human boy, rushing from point to point between the fearlings, shadows, nightmares, and Guardians. He looks around wildly as he runs, and your insides clench as his posture, his helplessness, his contorting face becomes a mirror of Jordan’s from the night you died. He looks behind himself constantly, checking on the small pack of fearlings that are in quick pursuit, cackling and imitating his whimpers. Yanking their short mane, you nudge Kidra slightly off-course from the beeline to Kozmotis they’d been on. Instead, you line them up with the scared child.

It’s like a jousting match. You stretch your hand out as you and he rush from opposite ways, and when your grasp floats straight through him—along with the distinct and uncomfortable sensation of loss you’ve felt before when mortal humans remind you of your invisibility—you cry out. This has happened before; you weren’t able to stop Jordan from getting mixed up in whatever grudge Mother Nature had against “fiends,” as she called them. And now you were powerless to stop this other child from falling prey to whatever’s worse than what humanity can imagine.

No. _Almost_ powerless.

You let the boy run on, turning your attention to the shadows mindlessly following him. The middle of the day, regardless if you can see the sun or not, reveals the fearlings’ ecstasy at any distinct scrap of fear they can detect. And if the headache does anything for you, it’s that it angers you to the point of rage.

More arrows fly, one after the other, from the taut string of your bow to the squirming bodies of the fearlings. Plenty miss the target, however, even if in the moment you’re quite sure they’re set to dig directly into whatever shadows threaten you.

Jack swoops past, barely giving you a second glance and simply chasing after the boy. Fine. Let the experienced Guardian take the credit; your heart has a different agenda.

The rough flashback ends, and you’re panicking over Koz again. Your vision twirls a little faster than your head can swivel, and it takes you an extra second to focus on him as he backs up from the approaching Nightmare Man. A terrifying creature that almost makes you stop in your tracks. But the daytime reveals its nigh-incomprehensible form to be a sick imitation of a human’s. Terrifying, but knowable. Comprehendable.

Several flashes dart in between your blinks. You recognize Tooth’s glow, and a few extra seconds lets you take notice of Katherine. Neither of them are the same women you’ve previously known them as. Here are two soldiers—formed and shaped inherently by the previous harm put against them. True friends, darting around, calling to each other, finishing their sentences wherever one goes unsaid. Or letting everything go unsaid, preferring to talk in synchronized improvisation.

Kidra finally slips past the fearlings and shadows to get you next to Koz He flicks his eyes your direction for a second, sighing in relief, but otherwise remains occupied with the thing before him.

“Hey,” you say, trying not to make a show of the gruesome scrape down his side. “Koz… Hey, you’re okay, right?”

His voice breaks. “Could be better.”

“What happ—”

He points. Past the Nightmare Man, you see the suspended fearling, and looking closer, you get an uncanny feeling that starts in the bottom of your stomach. It’s around four and a half feet tall, and there’s a curly mop of hair plopped on top of its head. Moreover, and more unsettling, there’s a very humanoid face blending in with the blobby shadows that normally mark a fearling. Its hollow eyes flick all around, as if trying to settle its gaze, though its nature will not allow it. It’s the silver thread running from Koz’s pinky finger to the fearling’s chest that tells you there’s something more to this bit of darkness.

“She’s still in there,” he croaks. “It’s not complete yet.”

The Nightmare Man gets closer and closer, so you let off a volley of arrows. Of the five you think you shoot out, one hits its intended target, but only one needs to. It twitches and shrieks as the one arrow pierces its chest. You raise your hand to the lens on your face, hesitating as your current migraine cuts across your vision again. And then you hear a soft, “No!” as Koz grabs your hand and drags it away from your face.

“No, no, no…” He holds your hand tightly, repeating the word over and over. You squeeze back in reply. He points again at the odd fearling. “We just need to get her to safety.”

By now, the Nightmare Man is three yards away and closing in fast. The spot of gold on its chest shrinks and shrinks until nothing but blackness prevails. It wiggles its fingers until they nearly spiral around themselves, and then they come to a point. The point leads an outstretched hand destined to make contact with you. Through you even, if the rate at which it moves is any indication.

You try to drag up some more arrows, but your pulse becomes extremely rapid for a few seconds, and your chest hurts. At the same time, a green swoosh darts in, slicing at the Nightmare Man. You barely register Toothiana taking a knee before she pushes up off the ground again. The streak she leaves behind is bright and littered with ashy soil, which drifts down until it tickles your nose. She screams again, but your headache only intensifies for a half-second before it relents and merely pulses in the background again. You suddenly remember how Arden hated spring, not because it wasn’t pretty, but because all of the blossoms came at the price of pollen allergies. Hardly a day between the middle of March and the end of July came and went where they didn’t come home with red eyes and a runny nose.

In the meantime, the Nightmare Man freaks out—glitches out is more accurate. It spasms and clips through the pit walls, and half of its body disappears into the dark soil as it wrestles with the green slice across its body that Tooth leaves it with. The fearling hanging up above drops a bit, dips again, and then starts falling the longer the Nightmare Man spasms.

Kozmotis starts repeating the word “No!” again until it’s nothing but a primal growl, and he drags himself up. He darts off, past the Nightmare Man, shifting his position under the dark spot, opening his arms.

_Rina?_ is what you think to yourself before there’s a small thump as he wraps his arms around the fearling, the weight of which drags him to the ground. Koz huddles over it swiveling his wild gaze back and forth.

The spire has been nothing but a persistent stream of flashing lights and overwhelming despair, as well as a symbol of despicable evil. This is where they were holding Kidra until you came to rescue them. This is where the other Nightmare Man beat and replaced Koz, and then tried to seduce you over to the shadows. This is one of four remaining points on your home planet that have been either gathering a lot of darkness and fear, or they’ve been siphoning the oldest parts of magic contained within the world. Either way, you’re fucking done with this shit; maybe you were unsure about Uluru, but the Thera spire can shatter and burn for all you care anymore.

If you can even reach it to topple it.

You try to scream yourself, hoping to activate a Spring flare-up within you, but you only succeed at scraping your throat hoarse in the process. Nevertheless, you head over to Koz, and he catches you as you stumble and cough. He mumbles something against you ear, but you’re too busy grinding your teeth against the pain to pay attention, especially since y’all aren’t safe yet. You try to lift him off the ground, but don’t even succeed in moving his elbow much. North and Bunny aren’t around, but you saw Jack. You saw Katherine. You came here with Toothiana. A flash of gold indicates that Sandy is around somewhere. And at that knowledge, your heart recedes.

All six of you weren’t enough to prevent something like this. Not enough to prevent an innocent from being taken, another innocent from turning heel, and from a presumably simple rescue mission from turning into a scene you feel all too removed from. Even if your fingers weren’t numb, your hearing muffled, your lips chapped and sore from the withdrawal, you imagine they’d be dulled simply from how unbelievable this is.

And all you can think about, as you watch Koz zero in on what apparently must have been a human child at some point, is Jordan. He’s out there. You know where, too, you just need to go. Your son. Your bright spot in the darkest times. The thing you clung to when you weren’t sure if Arden meant it whenever they said “I love you.”

How many decades of change and memories and love have you missed out on? You instantly do the math, and you refuse to admit the results to yourself.

The whine from the spire kicks up again, and you find yourself burying your head in your elbow. Even for as diminished as the effect is since you used the salve, it hits hard and rattles around your skull. You’re on your back, and you’re not sure how or when that happened, but Koz has his arm over you, blocking the aim of your bow, which trembles in your shaky grip. He hasn’t learned anything since the new moon; to be fair, neither have you.

Another slash of green darts in front of you, but it wavers this time. You try to yell, “Tooth!” but it comes out as a choked compression of air.

Above you, the clouds split. The blank, dark sky greets your vision for a moment, and then what at first seems like a few dozen stars gazes back. They blink, one after the other, and even after you blink away a bit of the dizziness, the eyes remain. Goat eyes with rectangular pupils. Slit eyes, black scleras, multiple pupils like honeycombs. The sky is dominated by set after separated set of eyes. And teeth. Oh, the teeth. Splitting and piercing the dome above you, like the world’s most specific planetarium show.

The eldritch creature blinks for a moment, and then gazes back through the break in the overcast sky. All of the eyes scrunch up, and for a brief moment, you think it might be on the verge of crying. But the gap in the clouds widens, until you have full peripheral to peripheral vision of the sky, and the only thing greeting you is more eyes and more, vicious grins.

“Thank you,” the gazes seem to say. “Thank you for breathing life into struggling shadows, previously hindered by the subconscious grip of our previous incarcerator.”

There’s no real voice, you know. Just the massaging implication of language against your already feeble mind. Almost kind. Almost welcoming.

Tooth lashes out at the spire, and you only understand this is the case because of the harsh scrape of metal on crystal. The same as back in Australia. Her grunts and cries become laced with noises of pain, and it occurs to you that the high might be wearing off for her. You reach to the ground, plant your hand, and push your body up.

“Tooth?” you say yet again, vision swimming. Somewhere around you—you lose track through the dizzy spell—you catch a flickering patch of green crumple to the floor of the pit. The shadows arc towards it.

“Darling… Rina. She’s—” A full three seconds later, you realize his words and turn your head his direction. His lips are moving and you’re trying to decipher them on delay.

“I can’t follow,” you think you say. He furrows his brow at you after you say it. You repeat yourself but he just shakes his head and leans closer.

At that, a screech-like sound makes you scrunch your eyes shut and try to save your sanity against the thing in the sky. Your eyes re-open, blurred for a moment, but then they focus upon one, bright speck in the sky.

It descends, punching a hole through the covering of eyes and teeth. Down, it falls, and the huff above you alerts you to the Nightmare Man, still lurking, as it diverts its attention from you and Koz and the fearling. It drifts up a bit, gathering a wave of shadows around it and flexing its claws again. But the light keeps falling, keeps homing in on a point nearby.

You reach up and around, squirming closer to Koz. He reaches back, wrapping an arm around your chest as you back against him.

“What’s that?” you whisper, apparently loud enough for him to hear.

He shifts behind you, then gasps. “Well… what do you know.”

There’s a silence proceeded by a loud, metallic impact.

You close your eyes as the spire pulses one or two last waves of darkness, and then the now-familiar sound of one of them tipping over collects against you eardrum. You push yourself up even more, suddenly away that you’re too close to the collapsing crystal.

“Koz,” you say, grabbing him and pulling. The world turns too fast for you to keep up. “Koz!”

You thankfully manage to move a bit away before the spire finishes creaking and snapping, and finally groans its way into the ground. However, as the dust rushes up, you pull yourself to standing only to see a tall, thin figure heading towards you through the resulting cloud of ash.

The figure resolves into a white-haired, glowing young adult, an angry expression plastered across his face. In one hand, he grasps a few large splinters of the spire. In the other, an equally glowing dagger. There’s something off about him, even if you realize he has to be a spirit because he can see Koz. Only focuses on Koz, really. Makes a beeline for your partner so direct and aggressive that you step in front of him and shout out to the glowing young man.

“Hey!”

His eyes flicker to you for a second, and then back to Koz. He drops the spire shards and summons another dagger to his other hand.

“Stop right there!”

You’ve lost track of the Nightmare Man altogether. The flickering image of Tooth is off to your peripheral vision, and you can barely hear the muddled voices of Jack and Katherine somewhere nearby. The young man keeps walking your way, drawing his hand back. He draws level with you, ignoring you until you grab his wrist and yank him off to the side.

Suddenly, his eyes widen further, and the glow around him brightens until you’re squinting and struggling to keep track of him.

“Leave Koz alone!”

He stops at that, and you see a vague glimmer of recognition flicker across his face. He peers at you, curious and silent.

“Nightlight!”

Katherine scrambles across your path, barreling into the young man so hard that she drags them both to the ground on impact. She takes his face in her hands and presses her forehead against his. He moves his head a bit, looking your way, and then past toward Koz yet again, but she drags his gaze back. They say nothing more, however, and you use the opportunity to turn your back and check on your partner.

“Koz?” you whisper. He cracks open an eye from where he’s huddled over the fearling. You comb your fingers through his hair, not sure what to say. He simply looks up at you, then gazes down at where the silver thread connects him to the humanoid blot of darkness.

“I wasnt…” His voice cracks. “I couldn’t…”

You’re not sure what you say to him after that, just that not long after, Katherine taps your shoulder, nodding towards Kailash once you look.

You drag Koz, slowly, into the goose’s saddle, and for a moment, the glowing man raises his dagger at the fearling. Koz’s breath hitches as he closes over it, and the young man stays his blade. He looks at Katherine, cocking his head, and she just squeezes his hand in reply.

And he just watches closely after that.

Jack and Sandy swoop in, laying Tooth in the saddle and strapping her prone form down. She’s still and dulled and barely breathing. Her eyes are wide open, however, and every so often, an attempt at words escapes her lips.

“What about the boy?” Jack yells as Kailash starts to flap.

Katherine leans over, as do you, and you see the human boy stopped in the middle of the pit, eyes glued to the shattered remains of the spire. The shadows are all gone; it’s as if there was never any evidence they’d been there in the first place. Nothing except a sinister air of stagnation.

“Take him home!” Katherine replies, pointing to Sandy. “And save as many spire shards as you can. You.” She points to you. “Toss them your containers.”

She has to repeat herself before you shove the pack off yourself, dig in, and then throw every free container you can find in two seconds to Jack. He picks up a few, and that’s the last you see of him before Kailash takes off into the late afternoon sky.

From your vantage point, the islands of Thera are sleepy and safe. Unaware that such a battle had taken place at all. You look above, just seeing the last smattering of eyes and teeth disappear behind the cloud cover yet again. By your side, Koz runs his fingers through the fearling’s apparent mop of hair, murmuring promises you don’t know if he can keep on his own.

There’s another flash of movement, and the young man darts his hand out to Koz. You cry out, holding an arrow out as if to stab him, but all he does is swipe his fingers over Koz’s face, stealing a few, glimmering tears. They glow in his hands, coalescing and forming into yet another dagger, which he hums at before tucking it away into his belt.

And then he stares at you and Kozmotis curiously, eyes flickering back and forth, as Katherine urges Kailash back to the North Pole as quick as she can manage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [come yell into my personal void](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	71. Relapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter depicts psychological self-harm, including in sexual situations. Take care of yourselves.

It’s been five whole days, and Toothiana hasn’t come out of her state. Whenever you don’t keep her in a magical coma with dreamsand, she stares up at the ceiling, eyes glazed over, lips twitching every so often and small noises escaping a few seconds after.

There was a moment, about six hours after you’d gotten back Easter morning, where all of the tension in her body let out and her breathing returned to normal for a half second. And then a cloud of memories erupted, settling like a haze over everyone in the room. It was nothing more than a jumble of the ones you saw that night at Uluru, but they were more scattered, chaotic, and tinged with a force that rattled your heads until you couldn’t tell where her memories ended and yours began.

The only coherent word she said was, “Flight.”

You shut yourself away in your lab for hours at a time, not doing anything, sitting with your back to the glowing containers lining the walls. And when you can’t stand it anymore, you sneak out, not bothering with a coat, taking Kidra for long runs around the Pole while telling no one where you’re going.

You return from one such outing, climbing back in through your bedroom window to avoid the questions the Guardians keep asking:

“How are experiments going?”

“You’re gonna find a cure, right?”

“How long is she going to remain in this state?”

“Gotta find a way to refine this, yeah? Make it all bloody worth it?”

You’ve been on the other end of this panic, frustrating yourself after Arden’s anaphylaxis and stroke, asking yourself day after day when you were going to fix it. But, as back then, the more questions you receive, the less time you find willing to work, less time you’re able to concentrate on the issue at hand. Just in case you fuck it up even more.

As you and Kidra stumble into your bedroom, there’s a small pulse of magic and a silver flash. You aren’t expecting the threads to wrap around your wrists. Even less are you expecting them to tie your hands together behind you and then drag you backwards into Kozmotis’ chest. He pauses for a moment as you catch your breath and recalibrate yourself a bit, and then he leans down until his breaths puff against your ear as the threads loosen.

“Darling…” is all he manages before you grab the threads in a hand and turn yourself to face him. He raises a hand to your face, places his forehead against yours, and then trails his lips down to your throat where he leaves a rough bite.

“Mnngh!” You make a strangled cry. It hurts, more than his bites usually do because he’s too cautious all the time. Finally, his teeth sink in, and as you close your eyes against the sensation, you imagine the monster in the woods he used to be, hunting you down and haunting you about your past. Your stomach jolts, first in anguish at the memories, and then in dawning realization that this is the first time you haven’t been numb since Easter.

A chill runs over you, and you not only remember that you’ve left the window open, but you realize that your cloak and shirt are gone, remnants of the simple broadcloth hanging around your shoulders. You open your eyes as his mouth leaves you, whining and pushing into him again. But he whistles for Kidra, whistles again when they merely dance and boof, and then he finally hisses, _“Out!”_

There’s scrambling, scraping, and then Kidra finally shoves themself right back out into the tundra. Another pulse of magic—a snapping sound as the window closes, a screech of metal as he draws the curtains.

He backs you against the bed until your knees catch and you go down. In an instant, he’s on top of you, leaving stinging patches all over your chest and neck. You keep your eyes closed, giving yourself over to all the different sensations. The bites, the rutting, the pained panting he lets out whenever his mouth moves away for the briefest of moments. You just let him take you so you can simply feel.

*************

The Rina fearling twitches in his former cage on the Island of Sleepy Sands. Sanderson is there every day for the next week, watching her.

“This place hurts it—”

“Her,” Kozmotis corrects sternly from his seat nearby. “And don’t even try to fool me with the idea this isn’t the best place to contain her while we figure out how to reverse this. The dreamsand prevents the transformation from finalizing. Or at least from setting up.”

He can fix this.

He keeps vigil, speaking to Rina every so often. There’s an instinct blooming within him, one that has him getting flashes of his young daughter more and more often. Sometimes the hallucination even imposes itself over Rina’s ghastly face, and he finds himself talking to _her_ rather than to the human girl she used to be—will be again. Must be again. He cannot bring himself to believe this isn’t reversible, even if the previous ones seemed as hopeless.

The screaming memories become more and more frequent. Every day, multiple times a day, he hears the echo of “Daddy! Help!” that the fearlings had used to finally break him and release them and possess him. Besides the dream memory he recovered months ago, this is the most distinct, consistent one he has, and he’s decided not to try and stop it from echoing. Just as a reminder.

Nightlight also joins him. Well, he stalks Kozmotis, one ready hand over his belt of daggers. It had taken a few more murder attempts before the Guardians convinced Nightlight he wasn’t _as much_ of a threat has he had been. Still, he can barely go anywhere—Pole or Island—without the bright boy tailing him. Kozmotis hums to himself, catching himself wondering once or twice when the knife in his back will come; it seems overdue.

Sanderson finally kicks him out of his home for the day, and Kozmotis finds himself pacing paths through the workshop, bright boy on his tail. He knocks on the door to the lab, and when no answer comes, he opens the door to see an empty, untouched space. Cleaner than his spirit has ever been as long as he’s known them. He tucks that thought away and heads around the workshop, even checking the sparring room. Neither yeti nor Guardian has seen them for hours, all surprised they’re missing. North tells a few of his workers to start checking all around, just to be on the safe side, assuring him they’ll find his partner safe and sound. He doesn’t voice his anxieties or pay mind to the widening hole in the pit of his stomach. He just returns their room, nods to Nightlight, and slips inside where he takes to pacing until the window creaks open.

There they are: cheeks chapped, lips split, fingers pale and uncovered and shiny as they haul themself through the window. Barely two layers of clothing wrap around them, and they tremble violently. He swallows, a burst of fury and anxiety welling up inside him as he watches them obliviously enter their room. Not checking for intruders! Not bothering to make sure it’s safe! Not glancing around to make sure that someone isn’t simply waiting for them to crawl back through the window!

He summons silver to his palms, and before he can properly think, he tosses them out, binding his partner’s hands behind their back. They gasp for a moment, and then he reels them back to himself. No resistance at all. They’re flush against his chest when his worried rage passes. He relents on the bindings a bit.

_It’s been five days of hell,_ the rational voice inside him manages. He licks his lips and says, “Darling…”

They yank and turn in his arms until they face him, and not long after, he’s clenching his teeth to their throat, ordering their pet far away, tearing open their shirt to get to more of their delicious skin, and pressing them to the bed. They pant and moan every time he sinks his teeth into them, and he gets harder and harder with every twitch and movement and sound they make, even if they tack their eyes shut and refuse to look at him.

He will make them see him again. They will look at him, acknowledge him, and he will be able to help them as much as they need.

He can fix this.

He jerks against them, hip to hip, the friction against his erection too rough to derive innate enjoyment. But they respond with a keening moan. He keeps at it, and the edge of pain hurts, but doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the last five days have. He laves his tongue into the hollow of their throat, and they thrash against the bonds, choking out a cry, scrunching their eyes even tighter.

They arc against him and whisper, “Pitch!”

He lifts from them for a moment, panting and watching them. There’s a moment when they freeze under him, and their brow furrows. But they still do not open their eyes. They simply swallow, lick their lips, and whisper, “Do what you want with me. I don’t care anymore.”

*************

That first day back, once you had recovered from the withdrawal, you had eagerly started back in on finding a cure. Some way to bring Toothiana back from whatever had taken over. You spent the whole day in your lab tossing random things together and dodging explosions and holding your breath against more magical fumes.

A lot of substances went to waste that day.

After that initial burst, you couldn’t bring yourself to try anymore, and when you weren’t under-dressing for jaunts through the tundra, you were hovering around the globe, waiting for North to make you reveal the rest of the spires. Three left: Burgess, India, Antarctica. It’s a relief to see your Easter efforts are sticking, but now, of course, there’s more questions.

“So, eldritch beast is circling globe,” North said a few days ago as he paced. You gazed off into the distance, waiting for him to tell you to do something. He paused and watched your for a moment until you realized and perked up.

“As far as I can tell, yes,” you replied. Katherine took up the banter after that, and you paid enough attention to keep up. And when they finally parted ways after reaching no new conclusions, you trailed your way to Toothiana’s bedside, the small voice in your head going haywire.

_Too cowardly to find a cure. Can’t find one, can you? Then let her die. Let her rot. Let it be, once again, on your hands that you try and try to wash, but will never be rid of the blood._

_What’s one spirit among eighty children and teachers?_

You do this every day for at least an hour, becoming number and number every time the spitting voice speaks, resignation growing like a fungus upon your psyche.

And this day, as the pinching teeth and rough hands grasp and grope, you cry Pitch’s name out loud. You realize too late, hear Kozmotis breathing and growling over you, and you can’t face him. Don’t want to break the illusion. Don’t want to stop because the numbness is gone for a moment, replaced with thrilling fear and acceptance.

“I don’t care anymore.”

With that, he flips you over and settles himself above you. He lightly trails a fingernail over the mark on your skin. You shiver. He gives a strangled, half-laugh, and then bites around the edges of the mark halfway down your back. You shift and cry with every pierce, lifting your hips up until you make contact with his, and you can feel his erection pressing at your tailbone. You jerk backwards, drawing a surprised and loud yelp from him.

A hand presses you down into the mattress. You can barely move, and you turn your face to keep inhaling fresh air. His fingers tense, and the dig of his nails reawakens a further sense of living in you. He relaxes his hand, and then digs them in again.

You moan Pitch’s name yet again.

“Are you sure?” he growls behind you. He fiddles at your pants, unhitching them and dragging them down around you until the cold meets your bare ass. He runs his other hand over it, caressing your hip and sneaking down and around until he presses one, cool finger into you. “Are you sure you have the right person?”

You shift and try to open your legs as far as he’ll let you, try to move yourself over him as much as you can against the press of your back. He scoffs and jabs his finger in farther, pumping it in and out faster and faster, adding a second as soon as your whimpering dies down from how familiar the first becomes.

“You really don’t care.” He removes his fingers, wiping the gathered slick off on your belly. There’s a rustling of cloth, and then you feel a throbbing heat against you. “You should care. I’ll make you care again.”

He pushes in all at once, and you strain against his hold, a silent scream ripping on your throat.

*************

_Fuck Pitch Black,_ he thinks as he shoves into them. _Fuck him for everything he’s ever done. For everything he rejected and crumbled. For existing._

They clench around him, moan muffling against the sheets. He curls over them, moving his grip from their back to their shoulders, where he sinks his nails into them and uses the leverage to thrust faster and faster.

They howl.

“Ah! I—I, ah! Pitch!” They choke on a gasp and then struggle to creep their hand over to one of his. They lift his fingers off them, and he slows to let them direct. “Hand. Hair. Please.”

He stops for a moment, but they whine again and roll back into him. They still haven’t opened their eyes, and whatever’s possessing him at the moment starts losing its grip of lust and desperation. He starts to say no, but they once again whisper the Boogeyman’s name.

He grasps the back of their neck. They pant, rolling back again in anticipation. He stops moving and just holds them. They swivel their head around as much as they can, searching for friction until their breathing slows and calms.

He can fix this.

“Who’s arms are you in at this moment?” he says evenly.

“Pitch?” they whisper yet again.

“Wrong.” He pulls out a bit more and loosens the grip on their shoulder and neck. They whimper, trying to chase him. “Say my name, and I’ll grant your request.”

They sob and pull and thrash, but even with the loosened holds, he still overpowers them in this position. Finally, their body sags.

“Koz…” they say. “Kozmotis, please.”

He takes a deep breath and leans down to their ear, placing a kiss to their temple and nibbling their earlobe gently. They whine and shift. They get louder and more insistent as he replaces his holds, using threads to wrap around their arms and legs and spreading them out. They shiver as he clasps the back of their neck and says their name in return.

“Very good. Now, just say the word when it becomes too much.”

He wraps his fingers through their hair and locks his grip, and then gently thrusts into them at the same time. They emit a sweet, sobbing moan, and he can’t help but get caught back up in the moment. The first thrusts are steady and predictable.

“More.”

He increases his pace until he’s back to jabbing in and out of them in earnest. A tinge of thrill runs up the tethers and into his consciousness, and a smile crosses his face. It’s working. He loses himself to the relief and tightness working its way through his groin.

Faster and faster. Erratic as ever. Breath panting and puffing. Leaning down and brushing his teeth over their ear and listening to them moan, loving how they squirm beneath him. Almost so helpless, but in control. He is is control. They are in control—

Something else jolts down the tethers, making him skip on the rhythm. Shaking his head, he focuses again, wondering if what he felt was a mere blip.

It shudders through the silver again, and beneath him, his partner sobs. But not in pleasure. A deep-set freeze rattles into his mind, and although he cannot see any images, vague or precise, like he used to with the shadows, he understands what this is.

_How long have I been holding them?_ He thinks. More than a minute. More than five, which had been their previous record. Closer to ten or fifteen.

They wail underneath him, and a drop of glitter rolls from the corner of their eye and down their face, dropping to the sheets where it absorbs. He pulls out completely, wrenches away his hand from their head, and dismisses all of the strings.

“What are you doing?!” he yells. They shake themself out of a daze, but they still shiver, sob, and cry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

*************

Oh, the bliss of torment. You’re taken back to that cage as soon as he wraps his fingers against your head. But this time, you don’t fight against the clanging alarm bells that come bundled with the sensation. Not this time.

The wrong face takes an iron grip in your hair and pulls you against the bars again and again and again. You’ll bruise at this rate, parallel lines of dark purple all across your face. Proof that your body can still break. A little taste of your former humanity.

“You’ll moan for me but you won’t scream?” the Nightmare Man as Pitch says. You don’t give him the satisfaction of a scream, but you do moan, the pulling and rutting sensation behind you an equal and opposite counterpoint to the flashback.

The fear becomes overwhelming. _Locket,_ your mouth tries to shout out instinctively. You bite your tongue against the impulse. Minutes pass, far more than you’ve ever gone before. The dive into that moment continues, and you start to cry in relief at how much it hurts.

Almost there, almost there. You’re not exactly chasing an orgasm. As thrilling as this position is, that’s not the point, not why you’re down here drowning in your own tears as they make the fabric too heavy to breathe through. But it is invigorating, terrifying to the point you wouldn’t be able to draw a complete inhale even if you weren’t being shoved down. Pressure around your heart. Ice clogging up your stomach. Flowing through your veins.

_Right where you belong, isn’t it? You deserve this._

Once unleashed, that spitting, voice-like impulse ruthlessly bundles you into a pressurized speck and keeps you there. All of the tension with nowhere to go except back onto you, building layer upon layer of itself until everything becomes nothing becomes endless, stabbing anxiety.

It peaks and you spasm with the sobs wracking your body, tears falling down your face. And then it abruptly leaves. You gasp and open your eyes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

You open your eyes as the tethers around you disappear and the touch fades. Koz’s angry, terrified face greets you, awash in such a run of emotions that you can’t keep up, especially as your mind roughly transitions from the cage to your Pole bedroom.

He pants heavily, watching you, waiting, on the verge of his own crying fit. But before you can even open your mouth, the door blasts off its hinges. The splintering wood gives way to the glowing young man, Nightlight, as he dashes in, both hands clenching around daggers. He makes a beeline for Koz, who yelps and tosses a net of silver in front of him, scrambling around the bed out of the way.

Nightlight gets caught for only a second before he tears through the net with one dagger. Someone else skids to a halt outside your door. Katherine takes a look inside, and then turns, shielding her eyes.

“Nightlight!” she calls, trying to enter the room without looking too much. You drag a sheet over yourself, feeling the flush work its way over your face and around your body. “Nightlight, stop!”

More footsteps bound up the way, and a few yetis, North, and Bunny appear. They have similar initial reactions to Katherine, but North at least nods to you, and strides in. He makes his way over to where Katherine is yanking back on Nightlight’s arm, just barely keeping his other hand from sinking a knife into Koz’s chest. North easily drags him back to the entrance of the room, muttering “Put yourself away, Kozmotis. Meet at table immediately as you are decent.”

Nightlight lets out an indignant cry, a sound that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up with how unearthly and ethereal it sounds. Katherine takes over the extraction as soon as they’re in the hallway, leading the furious young man away. Bunny takes off after them, leaving North once again.

He motions to one of the yetis and then calls out to you two, “Do not delay.”

_Or else,_ is the unspoken part. The yeti sets their back against the doorway, grumbling. You and Koz don’t look at each other as you change and freshen up the least bit, nor do you speak as you walk side by side to the table where the Guardians wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i tumbl](http://emilyparagraph.tumblr.com)


	72. Overdue Reunions

A whole panel of irritable parents and here he is being brought before them once again like a misbehaved youth. The only way it could be more degrading is if—

“We are, perhaps, a little disappointed in you two,” North says.

Kozmotis and his partner cringe as its being said, but he immediately follows it up with, “It’s not my fault the boy is uncontrollable!”

He points to Nightlight, who hovers by Ms. Goose. She keeps one hand laced with his to keep him tethered to the spot, and her other arm covers a host of daggers of various makes. Kozmotis checks again; has he ever seen the boy so livid? It’s pretty funny.

“We aren’t actually talkin’ bout that, though that _was_ quite the show,” the rabbit pipes up. He leans back in his chair, smirk across his muzzle. He’s been rather outgoing since Easter, despite everything. It’s amazing what a refresh of belief can do for one’s overestimation of themself. “We’re just a little put off by the fact ya aren’t cooperatin’ like you said you would.”

“I am—!”

“Constantly either with your partner or watchin’ that fearling.”

_“Her. Name. Is. Rina!”_

“Kozmotis,” North says. “We need you to focus on spires. There are three left we must destroy, and then eldritch shadow literally hanging over world!”

“And you,” the rabbit turns to the spirit, leaning over and speaking the least bit more kindly to them. “We really need ya to figure out the spires thing. And the Sources.”

They haven’t said a word, barely looked at him or the other Guardians since being dragged up here. They just sway where they stand, cracking their knuckles and rubbing their wrist. The rabbit starts to repeat himself, and they shrug his direction. He calls their name once, twice, and then barks it. Kozmotis starts at him, and then the spirit speaks.

“I can’t do this again,” they say, looking up. “I told you all it was a bad idea, and now look.”

“She’ll recover,” North offers. “She is not dead, therefore she will, eventually, be fine. Spirits can take a lot of—”

“I know they can,” they snap back. “But something about this feels… wrong. I can’t mess with the fundamental forces of magic on that scale until I fully understand them.”

“So what’s stoppin’ ya?” The rabbit’s ears twitch rapidly. “Your lab’s right there, you’ve got all the time in the world, go do a science and help the planet for once!”

The sentence rings out harshly, even for as much of it gets absorbed into the warm woodwork and dozens of bodies rumbling throughout the workshop. They cover their face with both hands for a moment and rub over it a few times. Kozmotis steps toward them, grazing his finger over their elbow. They startle at the contact, but don’t move away. So he stands there, rubbing their arm and shoulder gently to let them know he’s there.

After a few minutes of sniffles, they say, “I _don’t_ have all the time in the world, actually.” They touch the mark on their face and shoulders. “Between this and the fact that my son is in his mid-eighties, I’m on a few very tight deadlines. And it’s odd to me that you’re going so far out of your way to contort the logic of me creating magical performance-enhancing drugs when the last time I got chemically creative, the event became a proper noun.

“I just… I can’t do this anymore. I thought I was doing fine, but I’m not, and I think the only thing I can do before I trip down another bad path is to take a break.” They jerk their head up at the table, around at all the faces. “So, I’m going to stay with my son for a few months. Maybe do something crazy and get to know him.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then the rabbit lets out one, huffy, nervous laugh. “No, you’re gonna work as fast as possible so that we can at least fix this spire issue, if not the beast in the atmosphere. And... and ya gotta cure Tooth...”

“Bunny is right,” North says. “We need you here more. Tooth and whole world need you here more.”

The look up at him and meet his eyes. “I wasn’t asking permission. I am going to see my son and Alisah as soon as we’re done here, and rectify as many mistakes as I can with them.”

The three Guardians start talking at once, and his partner closes their eyes at the chatter. But they stand firm. They turn their head slightly in his direction and slowly open their eyes again, flicking them up to meet his.

“I’m sorry,” they mouth to him. He squeezes their arm and steps forward.

*************

“They weren’t asking permission.” Kozmotis repeats your words with a practiced undercurrent of malice and disdain. Nightlight and Bunny flinch in challenge, but at least all of them shut up.

“And I suppose you’re going with them?” Katherine asks. “We’ve been lenient with your boundaries so far, but the deal is still on.”

You half expect him to snap back about how they’ve done nothing but keep tabs on him, even outside of the Pole. Something snarky or at least biting, something they don’t necessarily deserve but should probably expect from him by now.

Which is why his soft, “No, I’m not,” surprises you. Leaves you with an edge of disappointment welling up inside you, and an opposing edge of relief.

“You’re right,” he says, looking to North. “I have business here. With the strategics, the knowledge of the shadows, and trying in some way to take care of Rina.” He takes several deep breaths and fidgets by clenching and unclenching his fists, then pressing each fingertip to his thumb in sequence. “I also never really expected you all to let me that far out of your sight to begin with. Not when I was the Boogeyman barely three months ago already. You lot don’t forgive that easily.”

“You have Nightlight now,” you say. “And I can’t imagine the other one is too far behind.” You nod to Katherine. “Your father.”

She replies, “Nightlight said he stopped on the moon to stay with Manny.”

“There you go. Plenty of help for this. You’re the Guardians, right? You’ve figured it out before, and you can do it again.”

“But you—”

“I’m just a young nobody with five little lights to my name. I won’t be missed for a few months, not when they have y’all to tell them stories and bring them hope.”

Katherine hesitates for a moment, then says, “You’re running away.”

A zing runs up your spine, rattling your skull when it reaches your head, making your teeth chatter. The familiar sensation of falling and being held by a tightening force of your own creation reappears from where it had quieted when Nightlight interrupted you and Koz. You feel immediately guilty, like you’ve been caught lying or cheating. But at second glance, you can’t put your finger on exactly what crime you’re guilty of, just that a persistent worry eats through your middle.

“You’re running away because one thing went badly,” Katherine continues. “And I think you shouldn’t give in to the impulse.”

Koz watches you from the corner of his eye. You turn away, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. You search through your immediate thoughts, but they’re clouded by the nagging currently inducing nausea in you. A few more thoughts deeper, and you find nothing. Nothing besides perfectly normal worries and hesitations. You go yet deeper, because your normal tends to be a bit skewed, but when you really think about it, there’s nothing more you can rationalize into deserving guilt.

“No,” you finally reply. “I’m not running from a problem one hundred percent of my own making. I’m laying down an armed weapon I know nothing about that I probably shouldn’t even think about playing with until I get the basic idea. I’m making sure no one else gets hurt.”

“It could end the fearlings forever.”

“And kill a Guardian or two on the way.” You shake your head. “Or worse, mess up something so fundamental in the planet that everything dies or gets messed up and unfixable. Which could be the same thing as getting rid of the fearlings, I guess.

“As of right now, I am no longer willingly a resident of the North Pole. You can either enforce my captivity and make me a slave to your war, or you can let me go for a few months. Not even forever, just a few months. Goodbye.”

And with that, you turn on your heel, cloak flaring. As you storm off, you drag Koz behind you, not stopping until you reach the lab.

*************

As soon as they’re inside the lab, they drop his arm and start rummaging around, dragging out stray bags and boxes from every corner of the place. How his partner so quickly finds these things among the items hastily shoved into the shelves, he’ll never know, but in only a few minutes, they have a line of items on the floor. They mumble quickly to themself as they pace, occasionally picking something up and moving it to a different part of the room. And sometimes back again.

“Darling,” he says. They pause in their scramble. He reaches out to them, holding their elbows. They’re vibrating, pulse ecstatic. They bite their lip to make it stop trembling, despite the action only drawing that much more attention to it.

Before he can say anything else, they pull him into themself, letting out a small whine and backing to the wall. He reaches his arms out and frames their head, refusing to go any father against them for now. Not forever, obviously, but he has questions. Concerns. Even a complaint or two.

After a few pathetic tries to bring him closer over them, they slowly raise their head to him, eyes wide and watery, and his anger starts to melt away. It’s not just being seen that always makes him giddy when they look at him, it’s that they see past his countenance, through his eyes, and fill whatever his soul consists of right to the brim with the mortal knowledge of also being _known._ He nearly gives in, but resists enough to simply caress their face.

“I’m sorry,” they whisper. “For earlier.”

“What possessed you to do that? And why drag me—or _him_ —into it?”

“To feel?” They shrug. “Hurt feels a lot more strongly than other things. And when you think you deserve it…”

“You don’t. You don’t deserve anything like that! No matter what the impulses within you say, you are more than your failures and regrets!” He grinds his teeth. “And it’s not fair to me that you’ve reacted this way. I love you. Period. I don’t want to hurt you, regardless of who you're thinking of at the time.”

They nod, and the motion turns into them leaning and burying their face into his chest as sobs wrack through them. Kozmotis still keeps a certain distance, despite a consuming instinct to cover them and shower them in affection until they stop crying. But he not only can’t trust himself to not take it further than he should; at the moment, he can’t trust them not to fall back into that impulse yet again.

They cry for several minutes, and he just lets them, running his fingernails over their arms to give them at least some sort of sensation to ground themself with. About twenty minutes pass, and he looks over to the door as a small creak reaches him. Nightlight glows through, one eye set on him, and he can only imagine that the boy’s hand is once again ready to strike at the first signs of suspicion. Below him, two large, familiar ears and a beak snuffle over the threshold.

He pulls away from his partner, strides over to the door, opens it wide enough to let Kidra through, and then slams it closed before Nightlight can barge in as well. There’s a small huff from the other side, and then a scratching noise. Like a dagger writing a warning sound to whoever listens.

“Koz?”

They wipe their face free of tears and reach out to pet Kidra’s ears once they’re within range. He returns to them and holds their hand for a second. Then he leans down and grabs the nearest item.

“Let me help you pack.”

*************

“This trip will refresh you,” Koz assures you over the next hour or so, placing a few books and other items into a bag. “Take your time with Jordan and Alisah. They could use you right now. And they could use you in a more healthy state than this. I urge you to leave that all here, as much of it as you can.”

You nod in response, finally grabbing the glowing containers housing the Source samples, as well as a few of the spire shards. You move to slip them into your quiver, but he catches your wrist, raising it up to see.

“I’m just going to keep it somewhere they can’t reach it,” you say.

“And you won’t have the urge to experiment with it at all?” He takes it from your hands and laces his fingers through yours instead.

You shrug. “You’re probably right. I’ll find ways to experiment with it. But I’d rather they be with me where I can mess with them than leave them here to have the others decide to inhale them all.”

He squeezes your hand, holding it over your quiver. You slip the substances in, and they disappear; and then summon your family photo. Jordan’s young, surprised smile grins back up, right alongside your own smile and Arden fervently pressing a kiss to your cheek. Your heart speeds up, and you want to clench this in your hand forever, burn it into your skin so that you never lose it again. Koz leans over.

“Now that I can appreciate it better…” he mumbles. “Your family is gorgeous.”

“Thank you.” You lean over and press a tentative kiss to him. He returns it, and then rubs his nose against yours. You press the photo into his hand. “Take care of this til I get back, babe?”

He holds it gingerly, at the extreme edges of his fingers so that you can see the majority of it wobbling in the air. He chuckles, and then carefully tucks it into a small slit of a pocket on his chest, one that blends in with the other decorated seams of his sleek robes. He pats it a few times and returns to you, grabbing yet another trinket from the pile and silently asking if you were going to take it. It goes on for another while, until the both of you are speaking more excitedly and you start rambling on and on about what you want to see when you get back to the city.

“About how long will you be gone?” he asks. “I don’t know how long I can handle just these weirdos to keep me company.”

“I'm afraid I really don't know,” you reply. “I have so little time with Jordan left, and as much as I want to save the world, I can't stand the idea of missing any more.”

“I’ll let them know when they ask, then.” He nudges you with his shoulder as he zips up one of your full bags. “Because they _will_ ask me.”

“They could always write. You have the address, after all.”

“Maybe I will,” he stands again, hauling up one bag as you slide the other over your back. After helping you tie the other to Kidra, you head out, making one last stop at your bedroom for a few more items—including a small lecture on why he shouldn’t just accept the cuffs chafing him.

“If I’m not allowed to let self-hurt tendencies pile up on myself, then neither are you.”

“All right!” he laughs. “I’ll keep up with it.”

There’s a moment as you hand him the salve where something else tickles the back of your mind. A hint of a memory, a promise from earlier. It’s not until the scars on your back twinge that you think, _Right. Now would be as good a time as ever to tell him, wouldn’t it?_ You clear your throat.

“It’s after Easter, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Remember when I told you about the night I died?”

“Yes, darling.”

“The disembodied voice I heard that night…” His brow furrows. “Was Mother Nature. I recognized her voice when she confronted me on the ice. She’s the one who drove spikes of earth through me.”

He stops breathing, eyes sliding off to the wall behind you. He trembles, and his grip gets tighter for a moment.

“You need to go find her.” He looks at you like you’re crazy, but you nod. “I don’t think she meant to do it, even if she was really flippant and rude. You deserve to know her better, and she deserves to know you, who you’ve finally become.”

He twists a lock of your hair silently, the closest he’s been to you since earlier.

“Koz? Kozmotis.” He returns to your gaze. “Promise me you’ll look for her, and that you won’t let this eat you up inside.”

He summons the cord between your hearts, kisses you deeply, wraps his hand around yours, and then leads it to the silver thread.

“I promise I will seek out my daughter.”

It flares, and an echo of that promise settles behind your ribcage into your heart. He leans into you licking at your bottom lip. You grant him entrance, and although it doesn’t go further than light petting this time, you feel the urgency of this goodbye. Finally, he releases you.

You hold him closely, saying, “See you on the other side, then. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

*************

Everyone gathers out front to watch his partner leave. That, and also possibly to make sure he doesn’t escape with them. He sticks near North and watches as his partner tentatively nudges Kidra down the row, their eyes darting across each person as if they’ll pounce on them and drag them back inside. Or, perhaps that’s what he himself is watching the Guardians for signs of. He keeps reaching to his hip for a sword that isn’t there, confiscated before they all went outside. “Just in case.”

The rabbit approaches them as they pass and hands them a large bag of his plants.

“These’re for your lotion thing,” he says. He then slips them a much smaller bag. “These’re for you to play around with so you leave the salve ingredients alone.”

His partner manages a genuine laugh at that, carrying on down as Ms. Goose also shoves some old books at them. They try to refuse at first, once they realize how old they are, but Ms. Goose simply says, “You’ll get bored and curious at some point. Take them. Though I do expect them back.”

They nod, and finally over to where Sanderson hovers in the air, ready to escort them. They take one more glance around, letting out a sigh of relief and a smile.

“Thank you all,” they say. “I’ll be back soon.”

They whistle, and Kidra stretches for a second before tensing and launching into the sky. Sanderson isn’t quite ready at the same time, but he catches up without too much fuss. The dark speck and bright beacon stand out against the overcast sky—which thankfully had started concentrating its densities over the poles, a certain spot in India, and Burgess rather than the whole world. Their forms grow smaller and dimmer until the curvature of the planet swallows them up.

Kozmotis isn’t sure how much longer he spends outside, watching the direction they leave. By the time North announces that he’s going inside to warm up, the others are gone. And not too long after, the weather gets the better of him, and he, too, retreats. North calls him over to spar, but he makes an excuse and slinks off to their bedroom, dragging out the photograph as he shuts the door.

It catches on something and refuses to close. Kozmotis jolts from his thoughts, only to sigh and roll his eyes as Nightlight once again haunts the threshold.

“What do you want from me?”

For whatever reason, this Nightlight had visibly aged in some manner during his time away. He doesn’t look older than a twenty-five year old, but he’s still lanky, still lithe, still quicker than anyone on this planet.

He refuses to move, watching silently from the doorway. Kozmotis sits on the bed and stares at the photograph, already missing his spirit. A glow hovers over him for a moment, and then the Nightlight swoops to the window, flinging it open and flying out.

And then only moment later, he plows back through the window, catching on the curtains and ripping them from where they hang and tumbling across the floor. He cries out, then tears through the fabric with one of his daggers, heads back to the window and points the weapon directly at Kozmotis’ heart. Kozmotis tries to shift subtly so that his vulnerable torso isn't quite as big a target. He's been on the other end of this before, and he'd rather never experience it again.

“Godfather?” Nightlight says. He taps the blade to his head once. “Remember?”

A few moonbeams twist and curl through the open window, whispering odd things in soothing voices. Nightlight pokes a few of them, but keeps his weapon pointed. He repeats himself in that odd, clipped, cryptic way he communicates.

“No, I don’t remember being named the Man in the Moon’s godfather,” Kozmotis replies slowly. “But I was recently informed.”

Nightlight gestures again. “Shadows? Fearlings? Nightmares?”

He shakes his head, summoning his new magic. “Not anymore.”

Nightlight hovers close, reaching out for the threads. He makes contact, and a spark flies from it to his hand. He yelps and jumps back toward the window, temporarily dispersing the growing cloud of moonbeams. He shakes out his hand.

“Kozmotis Pitchiner,” he says. A statement, not a question.

Kozmotis shrugs. “Not quite.”

Nightlight says no more, and just hovers and loops through the encroaching moonbeams. As they cover the whole room, Kozmotis swears he hears the gentle mumbling of two more people: one old in both age and knowledge, the other old simply by way of supernatural wisdom. It's the latter that unnerves him, and he considers shutting the window, but that would mean shifting into view of the bright moon. He ends his sulk, not bothering to remove Nightlight from the room as he winds around the workshop to take North up on his offer.

*************

Over the course of the next several hours, giddiness rises and grows in you, stronger and stronger until you barely remember that Sandy is right next to you. You chat out loud to yourself and Kidra, laugh hysterically, and shuck off layer after layer of clothing the farther south you get. The only time Sandy insists on taking the long way is when you get close to Burgess. He directs you the long way around, over the ocean.

And barely a few hours after that, the smell of fresh river water meeting marshes meeting ocean tides invades your senses. You peel off, heading inland toward where the address is, pivoting so fast Sandy nearly slides a bit farther down the shore before swooping back to you.

The distance narrows to the part of the city, then the neighborhood, then the street, then the block. You land Kidra on the asphalt, long shadows stretching in front of you as the early evening sun beats at your back. It’s a cute neighborhood, as much woods and stands of trees as it is orderly rows of houses with big front yards, and from what you can tell through the occasional chain-link fence, bigger backyards. In one hand, you clench a copy of the address, and with the other, you reach up to the alien keychain Jordan gave you via Koz. It’s attached to your cloak clasp, and it bounces over your sternum with each step forward. Finally, the house number in front of you matches the one scrawled on the paper, and you stop.

“Before you go,” Sandy whispers. You jump, having forgotten he’s there. “I want to let you know that I’ll be in the neighborhood frequently. My job and all.” You nod, and he continues, “I don’t plan on butting in, but should you need me for anything, follow the golden streams when they appear.”

“Thank you,” you reply. “Goodbye.”

He nods and floats off, disappearing into the impending sunset. A delighted shriek echoes up from the backyard, another voice quickly answering. For all the excitement that had built and built on the way down, your stomach is back to roiling, and your heartbeat sounds from one side of your head to the other.

You swing yourself off of Kidra.

The way to the backyard is thick with elephant ears, azalea, and a few young palm trees. There’s a thin path of tamped dirt winding through it all, and you carefully shift the lush plants and thorns off to the side so both you and Kidra can make it through. In almost no time, you peek out from the edge of an azalea bush into the backyard.

Alisah flies in a small arc into an above ground pool. She breaches the surface of the water, wipes her face and laughs, “Again!” as she paddles her way to the ladder.

On the deck stands an elderly man, a ring of wispy white hair like a monk’s tonsure plastered to his head from water. As soon as Alisah hauls herself out of the water, he slowly leans down to wraps his arms around her. At least one of his joints audibly creaks as he lifts her back into the air and tosses her into the pool with another overflowing splash. Before she disappears into the water, however, she locks eyes with you, and she gasps.

She resurfaces and clings to the side of the pool, coughing and spitting out water. She finds you again.

“Alisah? You okay?”

“Grampa!” She points in your direction, and you almost dive back into the bushes. Kidra butts their head into your back, shoves, and you fall into the open. You spring up immediately, trying to wrangle your breathing back from panting to frantic inhales.

The old man looks the direction Alisah points, wipes off his glasses, and then freezes. Meanwhile, Alisah drags herself over the side of the pool and darts across the grass, soaking your front as she hugs you.

The minutes between him making his way down the stairs—one at a time as he clings to the railing—feels so much longer, and you watch him every step of the way. Alisah is telling you something very quickly as she clings to you, but you’ll have to hear it again later.

Your son is right in front of you again. He glances across your face, wincing as he takes in the swirling mark and the lens.

“Hi, Jordan,” you whisper. “I’m so sorry it took me so long to come back. I'm sorry I left you and ran away and—and everything I did before I dissap—”

He swings his arms around you, cutting you off so suddenly you nearly choke. He's whispering something to you, but it gets lost as you both sob into each others’ embrace.


	73. Picking Up the Pieces

The next few days whirl by, and it’s almost like you pick up where you left off. It’s easy to lose the thread of awkwardness that starts every morning when Jordan comes into the kitchen—head of hair gone, voice deep yet thin, gait constantly interrupted by creaks from every joint—when the days are filled with an easy eagerness and joy.

Granted, you both keep skimming the edges of the conversation you know you need to have. Even if you’ve gotten better at confronting your past in the last three or four months, it doesn’t make it any easier to talk about. Who wants to admit failure, especially on your scale?

The first hint of this was when you introduced him to Kidra. He’d put Alisah down for the night, and you’d gone outside to retrieve them. Kidra had been busy gnawing on what few azaleas were left this late in spring, and you brought them in.

“Oh hell no!” 

Jordan threw a decorative baroque clock at Kidra, who whimpered and growled in response. He then tried to climb the walls out of reach, and it had taken a lot of gentle reassurances to convince him that Kidra was friendly.

“Like a familiar, I guess,” you’d said.

He firmly requested they sleep in the backyard, however. And never set foot in his house again. Under any circumstances.

Otherwise, it’s a routine of mundanity, and you can’t relax more if you try. Alisah goes to the last few weeks of school before summer, Jordan drives the carpool, and then he spends the rest of his retirement-driven days palling around the community like a celebrity. Because everyone recognizes him. Says hello to him. Chats with him. Asks him for advice. There are twenty- and thirty-somethings he knows by name, who he’s watched grow up and become successful adults.

“Grampa Jor!” is the common refrain for them, rushing down the street to tell him good morning, themselves like children. “Grampa Jor! Grampa Jor!”

About a week in, you’re sitting on the rooftop for awhile, watching Sandy’s streams twist to and fro as you lean against Kidra’s side. As the stars peek out from the depths of space, you hear a small, familiar voice.

_“I recognize the one living here.”_

“My son,” you reply to Selene. “He was there the night you took me.”

_“He was the delay in your acceptance of my gift.”_

You perk up. “What do you mean ‘delay?’”

_“You were dying. I took interest. During the bargain, you insisted you must see to his safety. You did so, and thus took on the role of my knight. Have you decided what that means, yet?”_

Brief flashes of walking down a long road. Jordan's serene, determined face. No crying. Just one foot down, another, another. Haziness that clears into confusion as you’re back in the clearing to begin your afterlife.

_“Hm… You will be able to tell me in time. I am intrigued to know.”_

Her words tuck away into the recesses of your mind, and you focus on enjoying your son’s and great-granddaughter’s company. It’s not until a few mornings later, when Jordan scoots into the kitchen earlier than usual that it circles back.

“Hey,” you say. You check the clock: 4:41 am. “Can’t sleep?”

“Not last night, no.” He shuffles around and makes an extra-dense pot of coffee. “I… I kept tossing and turning, worried I’ve been hallucinating these last few days. Part of me keeps wanting to apologize to you for… I don’t even know anymore. Disappointing you? Shoving you away? Accusing you of massacre?”

“I mean, that last one is mostly true.” You sigh. “But trust me, unlike back then, I have no problem calling it what it was. And I have no problem regretting everything now.”

He smiles, then yawns. “Well, regardless, I want to let you know that it’s… complicated how I feel. It hurt that you never came back. I could have used you for many years. But I figured you were off doing great things, wherever you were. And even if you weren’t, it was nice to know that the last thing I ever saw you do was so heroic.”

Selene’s words tickle your mind, and you ask, “What happened that night? From your angle?”

Jordan’s face goes stark. He’s silent for the next few minutes, until the coffee finishes brewing and he pours the both of you a cup. He chugs his, then pours another.

“Something was outside the tent. Something huge. I heard you call out to see if anyone was there, so I peeked out, only to come face to face with…” He points outside. “Except way bigger. I panicked, ran screaming, and then it got even more confusing. This towering, feminine spirit was just standing there, fighting the beasts, but not caring about you. I tried to get her to stop, but she was more focused on the creatures. Until…”

He closes his eyes and sets his face in his hands. When he comes back up, his bleary eyes are red as ever, and he wipes away tears.

“There you were, pinned against the tree, making gurgling noises and dribbling blood as the beast crushed you. But they were finally dead, so she fucked off into the night. I remember, she said, ‘I’m sorry. May your parent’s loss be more noble than mine.’

“I blanked for a few hours. Just sat there until the sun started rising. But then, you came over, wrapped me in your arms, and started walking us down the highway back home. It took a day and a half, but you didn’t stop until we were back at the house, which was already crawling with concerned people wondering where we were.

“You slipped past everyone and dropped me right into bed. I’d been trying to talk to you since you were suddenly alive again, but you didn’t answer. You didn’t say anything til a month later—you’d just hung out around the house, either hovering over me, or trying to kiss and comfort zaza even though you kept passing through them.” He smiles a bit. “I like to think they knew you were there the whole time, trying to look out for us both. They loved you so much…

“But, at the next new moon, you finally said, ‘I have to go. Selene is calling for me.’ And that was it.”

The gap in your memory and the flashes of events congeal. You yourself still remember little, but your mind smooths over the inconsistencies and works it into a complete narrative. So you hadn’t abandoned them right out. You stayed for a month, trying to make contact, trying to say goodbye. That doesn’t excuse your overall absence, but at least there was an attempt. You fiddle with your un-drunk, cooling coffee mug, and then Jordan hauls over a laptop next to you. It’s a senior piece of technology, judging by the coughing whine the mechanisms spit out as it boots up.

“Let’s see if I can still do this…”

He boots up a game, shining with cel-shaded visuals and perhaps a bit too much bloom. The title screen fades in: _Alchemoon._ There’s no dialogue, just two humanoid creatures dancing through a forest and collecting odd items. The parental one shows the younger one how to combine them, and even though the child isn’t so good at it, they keep trying. A short time later, darkness attacks their humble home, kills the parent, and shatters the world. The child is left scarred and floundering until they find two small parts of the world that fit like puzzle pieces, and then they keep fitting piece after piece together until most of the world is rebuilt. By then, they have grown up and found another small creature like themself, showing them the ways of fitting the world back together. Jordan finishes it in two hours, the sky throwing purples and oranges against the clouds as the credits scroll.

“This was the first video game I finished. Worked with a small team from college over the course of two terrible, terrible crunch-filled years. Not the healthiest way to go about it—banned in every country now, actually—but we got it made and got it out to people.”

“What’d they think?”

“A few critics blasted it as average indie bait. And… yeah, they’re kinda right, it does hit a lot of those abstract, cel-shaded, depression-themed checkboxes. But it hit them in the right enough way that people liked it, making it successful enough that our team won a few awards. And I got picked up by a larger publisher. I spent twenty years there.”

The little boy who tossed a coding book at the wall way back when is long gone, and in his place is someone so profoundly different than who you left him as that for a moment, you’re looking at a complete stranger. But Jordan reappears—in the same soft smile, the same self-conscious shrug, the same way of enthusiastically talking about what he’s created. You reach over and hold your son close.

“It’s beautiful,” you say. “I’m so proud of you.”

“It…” he swallows. “It’s what made me believe in you again. After several years of confusion, anger, and well-intentioned therapy, I finally decided to just believe what I saw that night. Whether it was real or not, I accepted it as the reality I witnessed until proven otherwise.”

This is the whole world right now, fitted together from the scraps of of a broken life. You keep holding him, letting the gentle, orchestral soundtrack play on as the world wakes around you.

You two spend the day together again. Well, you have no choice when Jordan skips down the highway after dropping off the carpool. By the time the sun is high in the sky, he pulls into a gravel parking spot in front of a park located in the small, bustling town you raised him in. You have a sense of deja vu here, but the landscape has changed so much that you’re not sure where you are. 

You finally stretch your legs after being in the car for two hours, cracking your back while you’re at it and snapping some energy back into your limbs. Jordan’s joints make a resounding retort, but at a particularly loud one, he freezes, face screwing up as he reaches his hands to his knees and takes deep breaths in and out. You rush over, placing a hand over the small of his back. He flinches away from your touch, and the memory of the first time he refused a kiss to a boo-boo stabs you through your heart.

You don’t look a day over forty-two at most, whereas he looks and moves like an elderly man. A pretty spry one, very much like how your own parents were at that age, but an old man nonetheless. You’ve been staying by his bedside during the nights, desperately trying to be there for every moment, just in case… Just in case…

“Whew!” Jordan cranks himself back to full height, massaging his back for a moment. “They don’t make me like they used to.”

He leads you to a shaded, secluded spot not too far from a robust fountain. Infatuated groups litter the lawn just beyond, ranging from couples and trios, to queerplatonic partners, to clusters of friends, all of whom roast and comfort in equal measure. Painters, chess players, and kite fliers linger as well, adding to the pastoral ideal that radiates from the area.

“One of my favorite places in the state,” Jordan says. He plops down. “Despite everything.”

You sit across from him, watching him divvy out the food. He suddenly freezes and looks up at you, a flush invading his otherwise empty cheeks.

“Can you even eat?”

You bark out a laugh, and snatch the bag of chips he’s holding. Popping it open, you grab a handful and shove them in your mouth. Maybe a mistake, as you hadn’t realized they were ghost pepper flavor, but you manage to wheeze out, “Yeah. Don’t know where it goes, since it doesn’t come back out, but I can.”

He compromises between shooting a look of pity and a look of reprimand at you, snatching the bag back. You turn and cough into your elbow for a minute, massaging your chest as the unexpectedly harsh spices coat the back of your throat and drip downward with every swallow. After another moment or two, you recover, and Jordan has laid out a quaint spread of ready-to-buy chicken salad sandwiches, potato salad, and lemon bundt cake.

You eat in relative silence, making small talk until you trail off into nothing. People flow in and out of the park, and you notice that even if one group leaves long before another, there are certain spots on the ground that they keep gravitating to. Just under a tree or beside a bush makes sense, but there’s a patch so obviously used that the grass is permanently flattened. You wonder if it’s pure coincidence or magic, and you start to form a small experimentation regimen before bursting out of your thought process as Jordan calls your name for the third time.

“What happened?” He points to his own neck, making swirling motions with his finger as he looks at the mark.

“Ah…” You take a deep breath. “Uhm… Well, about a year ago, I met another spirit for the first time. I think you met him as Kozmotis?”

He smiles and nods, his gaze flickering down to the keychain on your cloak. You waffle back and forth for a second about how much to tell him, but then you remember why you even came here.

“Well, before he was Kozmotis—sort of, but I’ll get to that—before he was Kozmotis, he was the Boogeyman.”

Jordan stops mid-chew. You hold up your hands.

“Look, please just let me tell you the whole thing before you pass judgment. Because trust me, there’s plenty of judgment to be had.”

“I mean, it was part of the internet lore about him,” he says, not quite paying attention. “But I though that was just edgy teens making creepypastas out of wholesome fairy tales.”

You shrug, sigh, and start the story.

From the years of self-deceptively easy isolation to the sleepover where you first met Alisah. From meeting the alluring dark stranger to seeing him revealed on Halloween. From your time in his lair to getting kidnapped to the North Pole. And of course, from the equinox to Easter.

You tell him everything.

The longer you go on, the quieter he becomes. He puts his paper plate down at one point and doesn’t pick it up again, merely stabbing at the scraps with his fork. When you finish, he takes in a deep sigh and lifts his glasses to rub his face.

“That’s not at all what I was expecting.”

“Me neither, honestly.”

“Mother Nature killed you. Of all spirits.”

“Kozmotis’ daughter, yes.”

“And you’ve been banging the Boogeyman.”

You choke on the soda you’ve been sipping. The foam rushes up your throat and out your nostrils as you cough and shake your head. Across from you, Jordan looks on, trying to hide his smile and control his laughter.

“Jordan!” you finally manage to squeak out. “Why?”

“Am I wrong?”

“No… Kind of he’s the _former_ Boogeyman—”

“But you two are… y’know. Yeah?” He starts packing lunch away. “Good for you.”

“This is not the conversation I wanted to have with you!”

“Too bad.” He slowly lifts himself off the ground and spends a few minutes stretching himself. “Besides, it was getting depressing there.”

“Jordan!” He looks at you, smile fading. “Jordan, I tell you I’m involved in all of this and this is all you have to say? This is miles worse than what I did before I died!”

“No,” he says firmly. “No, this time you’re not the cause of the problem. In fact, with your degree and background, and with you getting, shall we say, ‘mixed up’ in all this… I’m pretty sure that makes you a—”

You groan.

“Solution!” He laughs again and gathers everything up. You lay back and wait as he puts it back in his car and comes back. This time, he wears a more serious expression. “Come with me.”

He leads you over to the fountain. It feeds a small pool, and a sign nearby warns people away from drinking the reclaimed water. Jordan then puts his hand on the plaque that decorates the small pillar. A date is emblazoned across the top from approximately fifty-five years ago, and underneath you read:

“Today we dedicate this ground to the promise of tomorrow.

“We erect this monument to the memory of our brothers, sisters, and siblings killed during the disastrous massacre of the Zhuokou Incident. We dig up, overturn, and re-dedicate this soil to the planet itself, rather than continuing to use it for exploitative self-gain. We consecrate this site with our regret as a nation, as well as the unnoticed strife of generations past.

“This memorial will be a trail marker for future generations, so that they will never repeat our error of mistaking cultural and class exploitation for patriotic duty. We are better than this as a country, a nation, a part of the global community, and as human beings concerned for one another.”

“This park used to be the Kinetics & Chem building,” Jordan says. “Obviously, a lot changed after you went missing. Kinetics & Chem were accused of killing you before you could be interviewed. No one believed _my_ version of the story, of course, and since they never found your body, it went downhill from there.

“A few activist groups formed, not just because of you, but because everyone had gotten so fed up with the military-industrial complex that enough was enough. Your death wasn’t even the straw that broke the camel’s back; it was just one of the most well-known ones that kept people riled up.

“Many debates, protests, riots, and reforms later, this country has gotten so much better. There’s still plenty of work to do, of course, but even the recent upheaval in a few places can’t demolish the gains made in the last fifty years or so.

“I think what I'm trying to say is…” He takes a deep breath and locks eyes with you. “You shouldn’t have done it. You should have quit rather than spearheaded something you knew was going to be used as a weapon like that.”

A sense of resigned peace flows from your center as the other shoe finally drops. There it is, his true feelings about your place in all this.

“But—” You jerk in surprise at the word. “It wasn’t irreversible. We live in a much better society than we used to, and it seems you’ve taken your guilt to heart.” He looks around for a moment before wrapping his arms around you again. “I’m not happy with what you did, but I am happy you’ve started using your talents better.

“You deserved the chance to reform, and I’m so proud that you took it.”

You’re up on the roof again that night just as Sandy swoops over to spread dreams. He circles for a moment, waving, and then hands you an envelope.

“Good news, I hope,” you laugh. He shrugs and takes off. Popping open the envelope, you skim the letter, gasp, and then tuck yourself next to Kidra to read it out loud to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanted to give a shoutout to all yall silent readers out there. i know we dont talk, but i appreciate knowing quite a few of you enjoy this fic. it's very, very niche, i know. i dont write this for hits and kudos, i write for my own self-satisfaction. i have a whole degree in creative writing, and ive been writing seriously since i was 9, but this is probably the longest, most involved story ive ever written. and im happy with what im learning writing it.
> 
> so thanks for bearing witness to this. i honestly do appreciate it, and if you ever wanna drop a comment, i'm listening.


	74. Social Expertise

About a week after Kozmotis’ partner leaves, the fairy wakes up. He happens to be the only one nearby when she does, taking the long way back to his room to give Nightlight the slip. He’s become more aggressive about following Kozmotis around, though there’s less a murderous intent behind the shadowing and more of a childish curiosity and purposeful annoyance.

As such, he ducks away when Nightlight is distracted by Ms. Goose calling his name, and that’s just enough of a diversion for him to be in the right place at the right time. 

“Where am I?” comes the hoarse whisper.

Kozmotis peers into the room. A few magical mechanical objects whir and blip in the corner, blinking in sync with the twin crystals strapped to her wrist and head, all attuned to reading magical pulses and ebbs. A clipboard on the wall notes that the last yeti checked in two hours ago, and the next isn’t due for one more.

The fairy’s eyes are open again. She blinks them rapidly through the haze she’s had ever since they brought her back. He shakes his head, thinking the voice was his imagination. He starts for the corridor again, a board creaking under his foot.

“Who’s there?!”

He turns back and watches her twitch all over, clenching and unclenching a fist at her side. She jerks side to side a bit, making a grunting noise.

“Relax,” he says. She freezes. “You’re safe at the Pole, of course. Where else has such a consistently gaudy aesthetic?”

“Pitch,” she spits. “Whatever you’re planning, the Guardians—”

“Did your injury erase the last few months from your head? I’m no longer the Boogeyman.”

“Then what’s with the shadows?”

Kozmotis glances around at the lanterns and fairy lights decorating the room. “Nothing, as they’re nonexistent here.”

“Liar. They’re everywhere.”

He steps over to her, drumming up a few more creaks. She jerks away from the direction of the noise, blinking rapidly and turning her head side to side to hear better. He brings one hand an inch away from her nose and waves a few times. She just huffs and keeps clenching her fists.

“You’re blind,” he says.

At that point, the sounds of several people thunders down the hallway. He backs up from the bed as all of the Guardians shove through the doorway, stifling the small room. He manages to squeeze out, and makes his way back to the table, where the sag of boredom compels him to start a letter. Eventually, he composes a few pages, and then a few more. Once it’s ready, he cajoles Sanderson into delivering it.

Another week passes, with him trading moments between tooth hunting, sparring, strategizing, visiting Rina, and writing, especially after a return letter comes from his partner.

At the end of that week, the fairy is moving around with help, and the other Guardians find it in themselves to throw a celebration. They call it a belated Easter wrap party, but Kozmotis feels they’d find a reason to celebrate anything at this point. Even a simple better-than-average mood. He does admit it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the lighter atmosphere, however.

The day comes, and he’s jotting a few things down at the Island, watching Rina again. Though he’s spent a solid amount of time at the Island regardless, he purposefully set himself up there so he didn’t have to hear the vibrant sounds of the workshop winding down as the time drew nearer for them to go to. He’s been trying to imitate the frantic note-taking his partner always does when they observe their experiments, but he’s descended to scribbling in rages over the paper.

“We’re ready to go!” Sanderson announces, cheeks flushed thanks to a few pre-party drinks.

“Have fun,” Kozmotis replies, gathering his notes together and waiting to be sent back to the Pole. Sanderson just hovers there.

“We’re ready to _go,”_ he repeats.

“I heard you.” He shifts awkwardly. “Unless you mean for me to stay here while you’re out—which I would be grateful for the chance to keep her company—then I’m in need of transport.”

“You’re not going?”

Kozmotis watches Sanderson, confused. “I didn’t think I was welcome, especially since this is your rabbit friend’s soiree. He hates me.”

Sanderson wobbles in the air as he shakes his head back and forth. Then he pauses and holds his hand up, tilting it back and forth to indicated, “Kind of.”

“Look, Sanderson, I don’t think this is my… area of social expertise.” Kozmotis tugs the papers and pen closer to himself, looking to change the subject. “I know I owe you for playing postal worker between my partner and I, but there are better ways for me to go about it, I think. A lecture about how great Pitchiner was, perhaps. A lengthy apology for the grief I’ve given you recently. Public apology, even.”

Sanderson continues to hover in the doorway, still refusing to move, still staring at him. Though Kozmotis notices a slight spark in his eyes at the offer of Golden Age reminiscences. The Sandman hesitates, opens his mouth, and then closes it again to instead shake his head and wave for him to come on.

“No one wants me there!”

“I do.” Sanderson places his hands on his hips. “Jack and North are expecting you.”

“Three out of seven. But how’d the majority of them feel?”

“We voted and it was an almost unanimous ‘Yes.’”

That gives him pause. He searches Sanderson for any tells, any signs of trickery or lies. But the spirit might be nearly incapable of such things, or at least incapable of them in conjunction to malicious intent. He extends a hand out, nodding, but Kozmotis still can’t bring himself to take it.

“So Ms. Goose and the rabbit predictably voted against me. What’s new?”

“Katherine abstained. Tooth voted yes, bringing the results to six against one. Even Manny and Nightlight believe in you enough to say yes.”

He still hesitates. The fact that the Man in the Moon weighed in makes him only the more nervous, rather than alleviating anything. He shakes his head.

“I have notes to go over. A return letter to compose. Spire demolitions to plan. I can’t…” He tries to wind a smile across his face, to be polite for once, but judging by Sanderson’s expression, it’s not convincing enough. He shakes his head. “I’d rather be alone than shunned. Hundreds of years has taught me that’s the preferable option.

“B-but thank you!” he quickly adds as Sanderson turns away, reaching for the teleportation globe. He tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. Kozmotis takes a deep breath. “Thank you for the invitation. And… I truly am sorry for my attitude since the new moon. I’m not fond of your secret-keeping from me, but you’ve just been trying to do right by my daughter. For that, I thank you as well.”

Sanderson smiles warmly, and then the smile warps into an awkward squiggle along his face. His body trembles in the air, which Kozmotis recognizes.

“You’re laughing. I’m sincere for once, and you’re laughing.”

He throws up his arms, nearly catapulting his handfuls of papers all over the place. Sanderson holds up a finger and tosses the globe. Before Kozmotis can storm through, Sanderson dips his head across the portal, and North bursts through with two yetis at his sides. The portal closes behind them.

“Come to party.”

“No!” Kozmotis whirls around as the yetis start to flank him. He glares at Sanderson, who just smiles and shrugs, still shaking in laughter. “Don’t subject me to the humiliation!”

“You have invitation to _Guardian_ party—finest kind!—and you reject yourself before you can ever be rejected!”

“I have _good_ reason to believe I’ll be rejected!” He backs into the bars of the cage. Rina claws at his robes, probably attracted to the panic he’s trying to tamp down. The yetis keep approaching, holding something in their hands.

“This will be good for you,” North says, gesturing to them. “So you are going.”

In an instant, his visions blacks, and something wraps around his torso, confining him, he thrashes against rough fabric, yowling obscenities as his equilibrium displaces for a moment. He’s upside-down, contorted heels over head when he’s released from what appears to be a burlap sack. He slinks around until he’s facing upright again, meeting the amused looks of the rest of the Guardians, their armies, and, front and center, a hysterically laughing Pooka.

“Ya actually went and did it!” he says between howls. He wrangles himself under control and takes a sip of the drink in his hand. “All right, deal’s a deal. I won't bother him.”

The rabbit chose a more temperate part of Australia to host, and between the sea breeze and the endless drinks, he finds himself comfortable enough. Luckily, there are enough yetis, Ranconturks, small fairies and egg statues to make a large enough crowd for him to disappear into, at least for a few moments at a time. The crowds constantly move and disperse around him as the circling armies form and reform small groups, exposing him more than he’s used to. But even within the casual atmosphere and mingling, there’s no sense of inherent inclusion waiting for him. He drifts from point to point, making small talk and saying a few “Excuse me’s” as he passes between curious stares and mildly amused glances.

As the hour becomes two, becomes three, becomes way too long, he initially sticks to North’s, Jack’s, or Sanderson’s sides, pretending not to hear the groups dropping his or Pitch’s name as he passes. He dares to stare down a few of them, and they stare back. Some glare back, which is mildly more comforting in its familiarity. One or two wave, smirks on their faces, before turning back to their conversations. They all speak to each other so easily, but Kozmotis feels so lost without his partner to mediate, and as soon as North overhears rumors of a drinking contest, that bridge also goes missing.

He shifts beyond the main throng, ducking under a small grove of trees. Not too far out of sight to trip any alarms, but far enough that he can huddle in the thin shadows and try to breathe.

He rubs his face, tuning out the increasingly raucous crowd chanting the names of their favored contestants. Two Raconturks pass by his spot, watch him watch them, and then whisper to each other. Suddenly, one of them turns back.

“You’re Pitch Black?” they ask.

“I go by ‘Kozmotis’ now. But yes, I was the Boogeyman.”

“What was that like?”

He glances from them to their friend a few steps away. He cranes his neck and tilts his ear their way.

“Mostly angry and lonely,” he finally answers. “Why?”

“Just… wondering?”

“Well, that’s about the extent of it: anger, loneliness, and crimes.”

The Raconturk nods with false enthusiasm, waits for a few moments, then moves away, calling, “Nice to meet you!” as they rejoin their friend. They duck their heads together as they rush off.

Kozmotis sits down on the sand and knocks the back of his head against a tree trunk a few times. _From dark general, the world just within reach, to freak show display in the span of mere months._ He starts composing his next letter in his head, and just thinking of his partner helps ease the roiling in his stomach.

“Ladies, I’m fine! Anyway, three just dropped: central incisor, two first primary molars.”

The fairy walks over the sand not too far away, stopping in front of his hiding spot. A phalanx of fairies surrounds her, two contingents on either side to guide her as she moves about, several more hovering around and chirping as she doles out assignments. A few of them fly off in response to the coordinates, and the rest drift her closer to the trees until a low-hanging branch brushes her shoulder. She instinctively bats at it, managing to snap a foot of it off the tree itself in self-defense. She pulls her hands over it, and huffs when she realizes she’s successfully fought off a plant.

“This is stupid,” she mutters. “How does Pitch manage being in the dark all the time?”

He rankles. “I doubt blindness is comparable to the shadows. Not to mention I can see through it.”

The fairy jolts again, kicking up a stream of sand. It mostly goes wide, but he still closes an eye to avoid getting particles of sand in it. She heaves several breaths in and out, failing to act like she hadn’t been startled all that much. The small fairies around her chirp and soothe her, but she flinches as a loud, sudden shout comes from the rest of the party. From the snatches of words, Kozmotis gathers it’s the result of the contest. He can’t tell who won, however.

“I bet they’re having a lot of fun over there,” the fairy says, turning her ears in the general direction of the noise. She gapes her mouth wide open as if to clear them of pressure, and then rubs her eyes, blinking rapidly and squinting. “Wish I could see it.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t in the thick of it, despite your current predicament.” His voice surprises him; he’s not planning for conversations. Perhaps it’s the one, or two, or five drinks he’s had. “Aren’t you supposed to be the guest of honor?”

“I’ve been out of commission for two weeks, I can’t party just yet.” Right on cue, she bristles again, and a few more fairies dart over for directions. Once they leave, she sighs. “Even with the help you all gave me, I’ll probably have to seek out adults’ teeth to try and supplement the gap in collections. I wonder if those dentists I made friends with are still around…”

Kozmotis keys in to this. He’s never heard of her going to adults to keep up her magic. “You can use adults’ teeth?”

The fairy cocks her head and listens his direction. The group of fairies around her close in, one or two chittering and approaching him angrily. He waves them off.

“Sorry if that’s a sensitive subject, I’ve just never heard of you—”

“It’s more difficult,” she says. “But it’s not like humans stop making memories after they lose their last baby teeth. And it’s not like adults aren’t susceptible to wanting comforting memories during dark times.”

Of course. That’s why he’d wanted to eradicate and corrupt the tooth boxes in the first place. Lack of joyful memories means children grow into haunted adults who cannot distinguish potential happiness from hazing. Kozmotis steers his thoughts away from what Sanderson and North had said earlier in favor of poking his tongue into the gap in his own teeth. The one created fifty years ago when his armies had been defeated on that terrible Easter.

 _What would the then-humiliated Pitch Black say about me now?_ he wonders. But as he licks over the gap, something occurs to him. He refocuses as the fairy _hmphs_ and starts toddling away from him.

“Fairy? T-Toothiana?”

She halts so suddenly that she nearly topples over. “Yes… Kozmotis?”

_It can’t be so simple. She can’t still have it after all these years._

“Do you remember knocking my tooth out fifty years ago?”

“Yes, and I gave you a quarter for it, so it’s mine now.” Her wings buzz a few times, more for show than an attempt to achieve lift. “Why?”

“Is _that_ why it hasn’t grown back?”

“I traded you for it fair and square.”

“I didn’t exactly have a say in the negotiations, if I recall correctly.”

“Well regardless, it’s a pretty trophy on my shelf now.” She smiles, and the gesture echoes on the faces of her entourage more as sneers. “Good memories attached to that one. Good memories for me, anyway.”

 _No way, no way,_ his mind repeats. But he barges through it to ask, “You don’t suppose you could use it to help unlock a bit more of my past, do you?”

She takes a blind step in his direction, the fairies quickly nudging her back and forth to keep her on track. Eventually, she makes her way over to him, swaying over him and pursing her lips.

“You really want to know more about your past?” She manages to glare through him. “To uncover all of that?”

“If all I get out of this is my wife’s and daughter’s names, I will consider it a success.”

She makes a small noise, then turns on her heel. Kozmotis rolls his eyes and slumps against the trunk again. After she gets a few yards away, she promptly turns back and says, “I’ll run it by North, and we’ll see if we can’t get you to the Palace once or twice a week. Now that you’ve brought it up, I’m a little curious as to what an alien’s tooth memories are like.”

She disappears faster than he can thank her, and after a few moments of collecting himself, he rises from the shade of the tree and goes over to see who actually won the contest. Ms. Goose sways in her seat, self-satisfied and intoxicated smile on her face. She props her head up with her hands as she watches North and the rabbit ribbing each other with increasing, red-faced hostility. Sanderson hovers near her, wobbling back and forth.

“They should have known better than to challenge Katherine Shalazar, huh?”

The Raconturk from earlier nods to him, then toward the front. Kozmotis watches them for a second, waiting for the next part to happen—the joke, the dig, the sneer. They just wait for him to speak.

“I hadn’t known she could hold her own in this sort of arena,” he says. They nod. “But knowing her past, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

They snort and start rambling on and on about Ms. Goose’s rather surprising array of talents beyond what he’s seen. He glances back up, catching North watching him for a moment before the rabbit says something else and the banter starts back up again. Slowly, more people surround the Ranconturk, and despite his lack of participation in the conversation, a space in the circle stays open for him.

Long after sunrise the next day, Kozmotis hoists a stumbling, rambling North through the portal. Sanderson has his other side, but it feels like most of the Cossack’s weight hangs off of his shoulder. A few yetis pour in behind them, trudging over to their stations. He barely gets three more steps when North curls his arm around his neck and pulls him close.

“I am proud of you!” he screams directly into his ear. Kozmotis sinks his nails into the burly arm, trying to at least get enough room for air. “You are making good progress in becoming good guy!”

He manages to slip from under the arm and dash a few steps away. North loses his balance for a second before grabbing on to a column to steady himself. Kozmotis brushes himself off, knowing that the sand from where he sat will take ages to come out of all the seams and folds. Once he looks back up, North has a contemplative, sober look about him, tinged with a twinkle in his eye. Sanderson smiles, too.

“I’m going to my room,” Kozmotis says. “I have a letter to write.”

“That's it? What did you think?” He keeps walking away. “Kozmotis, come on!”

He halts. His own buzz cleared long ago, and his head is annoyingly clear, ringing with the idea, _They genuinely believe in me. Despite everything._

He takes a deep breath, turning back for just a moment.

“It… was nice.”

He rushes to his room, slamming the door closed before he has to answer for anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is gonna be a little different :3 see u then


	75. Mail Time

“It’s wonderful to hear from you, darling, and I’m relieved that things are going well between you and Jordan. ~~The fairy~~ Toothiana has been doing much better over the last few days, given that she’s returned to her Palace. Her tiny fairies are helping her move around, and she hasn’t yet tried more than hovering in place a foot off the ground.

“Jack keeps talking about how he ‘needs to stop by’ the Palace and help her fly for the first time in… Has it been a month already? Regardless, he has yet to remember to go. He’s too busy racing between the Andes Mountains and keeping track of how many fearlings he’s taken out on the tooth patrols. To be clear, one mass of shadow counts as one mass of shadow, and his score is absurdly inflated.

“I’ve been going a few times a week to the Palace, actually. Toothiana has agreed to try an experiment with one of my teeth she knocked out ages ago, to see if she can’t use her powers to restore more of my memories. It’s been a slog. I know I’m only a few weeks into this… therapy, I suppose you could call it, but it feels like every time my mind conjures something up, it collapses as quickly. I knew going in that this would be a difficult task, but it leaves me exhausted and frustrated every time.

“But what else is there to do to pass the time, read and strategize? If I do any more of that, I think I’ll end up ruining perfectly laid plans with overthinking.

“It’s more tolerable than spending hours at the Island, however, trying to think how to cure Rina. It’s times like these I wish I still had a connection to the shadows. Then, I could simply look for the core of them all and try to extract them. I think that would work. As you can guess, I never tried it when I was in control.

“I feel helpless, and I hate Pitch Black more and more with every passing day. I feel even moreso because I look at her and I not only see the ghost of the daughter I barely remember, but also you. Is it still spreading? Have you found a way to stop it?

“You don’t need to answer. It’s none of my business, and I’m just musing into this letter now. You should focus on Jordan and Alisah, and on relaxing. When next we see each other, I’d rather have you back content and steady, rather than as you were at our departure.

“Keep enjoying yourself, and take it easy. I love you.”

*************

“Glad to hear Tooth’s doing better! I still get a little nauseous thinking about her collapsing, and I wonder if the blindness will be permanent. Spirits can heal back from a lot, but if your and my scars are proof of anything, it’s that magic tends to take injury to a whole new level. But I’m glad she’s adjusting well.

“I’m so proud of you for the therapy, babe! I’m not one to preach, but it really is a good first step to sorting yourself out. I mean, I guess this has more in common with physical therapy than psychological therapy, but less than two months ago, you were insisting that you never needed to remember your past life as Kozmotis Pitchiner. And I’m glad you’re finally looking into it.

“If there’s anything I can say about it, it’s that therapy is kind of like magic: there’s a ‘buy-in’ you have to commit to in order for it to work. That’s why I never really got far in my human life. If I’d just given over to, well, belief, then I’d probably have been a better, more clear-headed person back then. I haven’t changed much since then, huh?

“To answer the even more serious questions… Yes, the mark is still spreading. No, I’m not any closer to finding a way to stop it. It’s slowed a lot thanks to the salve, of course, but the itch keeps coming and I kind of dread checking it in the mirror each day. I haven’t let Jordan know the whole extent of it, actually. I don’t want him to get any more anxious than he has to be on a daily basis. Luckily, he was always a smart kid, so he actually gave enough of a damn about his therapy to benefit from it.

“I’m just as stuck as you are in discoveries. I’ve sat down a few times to start fiddling with what I brought, but I just can’t. My pulse speeds up, I get dizzy, and if I don’t go off and do something else, a whole panic attack carries me away instead. I just can’t get over the idea that I’m making the same mistake again, even if, yeah, enhancing the Sources to enhance us will probably make short work of the shadows in some way shape or form.

“I just wish I knew what the spires were all about. Obviously, I have some ideas on what they could be, but without really diving in, ideas are all I have. And they’ll just stay as ideas until I can rediscover that zing of excitement that always kept me going before. Trying to dig in now is terrifying and empty.

“But even through all that, I am doing a lot better. You better watch out the next time we’re together, because I may just wrestle control back from you again ;P Honestly, though, I’m really sorry about that day, and I promise I won’t do that again. Being with you is thrilling, but there’s a fine line between ‘thrill’ and ‘horror.’ And thank you for stopping when you noticed.

“The sun is rising, so I’ll stop straining my eyes and running out the flashlight. Love you.

“P.S. Good morning~”

*************

“I’m sorry to hear your experiments have stopped. Back during those nights in your forest, there was nothing more intriguing that your constant onslaught of ideas and enthusiasm. It was in that onslaught that simply gathering information for my plans moved to really listening to you. I understood none of it—and I mostly still don’t—but the peaks and valleys of your lectures drew me in nonetheless. I suppose I’m grateful that I can’t comprehend science, otherwise I’d never have started enjoying being Kozmotis more than Pitch.

“The Guardians have also been dropping hints that they want me to ask you to return. By ‘dropping hints,’ I of course mean badgering me with decreasing levels of subtlety. I know the rabbit is anxious about the world and whatnot, but he could stand to threaten me more politely. I mention all of this in case Sanderson speaks to you about it the next time you see each other. Don’t let him coerce you into coming back if you’re not ready. Much as I’d love to see you again, you need to rest.

“In better news, I’ve been recovering more and more actual memories rather than mere flashes of emotions and faces. I don’t know if I’ve ever really described how the Golden Age was structured, but it was overseen by several noble houses ruling principalities known as constellations. I lived within the constellation Orion, under the House of Lunanoff, and from there joined the Golden Age armies in their far-reaching spread to consolidate the cosmos into an era of peace and prosperity.

“(At least, that’s what Sanderson says the point of it was. I haven’t quite gotten so far as to recover more general memories such as those.)

“Early on in my career, I was with my commanding officer at a meeting between Orion and Ophiuchus. The talks had been starting and stopping for awhile as they weren’t keen on entertaining allies of Bootes. However, we knew that in order to create a stronger buffer between us and the shadows, we’d need the support of House Etoile. I don’t remember what I said, but it managed to de-escalate the rising tensions enough for my commanding officers to move everything along. Sanderson assures me that the alliance went through eventually. Besides the clear vision of the event, the only thing I could recover beyond that was a sense of pride and confidence I hadn’t felt before that point.

“It was reassuring to experience.

“I won’t ramble further, especially about things that have no point. Mostly I’m trying to look busy so that the Guardians leave me alone for a bit and so I can perhaps stay in from the next round of tooth collection. I’ll be so grateful when Toothiana recovers enough to take on the bulk of her responsibilities again.

“I love you. Good night.”

*************

“The Golden Age sounds so beautiful, but also ridiculously like Earth countries. I hope nothing like the alliance domino effect that led to World War I ever happened out there. But I guess anything is possible. I mean, it’s outer space filled with loads of sapient civilizations, I hope a lot of weird things have happened.

“By the way, tell me anything you want. It’s odd to see you being the one rambling on and on, but it’s a nice change of pace, too. If it helps them stick in your mind, tell me everything you remember.

“Anyway, Alisah’s a weird kid. Even beyond the fact that she’s light years ahead of me in terms of technology and the internet (the more things change there, the more they stay the same). She’s got it in her mind that Kidra was you transformed into a creature, and has been trying to coax ‘Kozmotis’ out of hiding ever since. I think it’s because I showed her Ladyhawke a week ago, and she was enamored with the idea of a curse keeping two people so close, yet tantalizingly out of reach. Kidra loves the attention, of course, and I’m thinking about letting her take them to school for the day. Jordan would rather that not happen, though. He’s accepted Kidra as benign, but even all these years later, he remembers the fiends in the forest.

“Speaking of that night, have you had any luck in searching for your daughter? Or has Sandy finally told you where she is?

“I don’t have much time—Jordan’s taking us out to theater by the sea. Some twentysomethings he mentored at their high school invited him to the premiere of their play. It sounds interesting enough.

“Talk to you later. Love you.”

*************

“I still owe you a vacation, don’t I? Maybe we can spend it globe-hopping and attending all kinds of performances all over the world.

“I have unfortunately gotten no closer to locating my daughter than before. ~~Nor has Sanderson been any help Sanderson has still not~~ Things are complicated. In one sense, yes, Sanderson still refuses to make a difficult journey simple, but after I exploded on him yet again the other day… Well, first he dangled me over the edge of the Palace, which is fair in retrospect, but he said that he can’t tell me what he knows about her because she made a wish.

“The thing about wishes—granted by Wishing Stars’ magic and tempered by Star Captains—is that the bigger the wish one makes, the more effort goes in to making it come true. Sharing the exact wording of the wish also makes it more difficult. He told me that he’s never sensed her wish come to fruition, so a part of his concentration, for all these years, has been dedicated to keeping the wish going, in the hopes she would find the peace she desires. If anything, he’s afraid the battle at the Pole set things back for her. I dared ask if he was so sure she wanted the wish to come true anymore. He didn’t answer for a long while, and then simply said until told otherwise, he would continue to work toward granting the wish.

“I haven’t known what to think since then, but he and I seem to have come to an understanding. I won’t press him any further, and he’s graciously chaperoning my visits to the Palace now, rather than having to wait for any other Guardian to find the willingness and time. And my vigils on the Island are the least bit more productive now.

“Stay safe. I love you.”

*************

“Darling it’s been awhile since I sent my last letter. I know you got it, but are you well? Please send word back. At least one word.”

*************

“Hey. Sorry about that. I was just having a time, and I kind of spaced out for a bit.

“I finally went to see Arden’s grave. They’d opted for a natural burial, so there’s just a small lab-made gemstone from a bit of their ashes on a wall next to their plaque in a mausoleum. And it’s a good-sized plaque. I hadn’t realized they were key in pushing for a lot of the reforms that ended up happening. I’m proud of them for that. According to Jordan, they really used their writing talents to boost the morale of the activist groups, and to express themself and their anger, grief, and joy.

“Their gemstone is in the shape of a third of a heart. There’s another one for me, making up another third. And right next to those, finishing it up, is the gemified ashes of their girlfriend from college, Kiersten, ultimately known as Arden’s wife until they both died of natural causes. Jordan said that she saw Arden getting interviewed a few months after I disappeared. She’d just gotten divorced, and didn’t think twice before contacting Arden. It was like they just picked up where they left off, two decades older with kids.

“I have no right to be heartbroken over this, but it still hurts. I don’t know why, since I knew they were long-dead anyway, but… I don’t know. Maybe I just had too rigid an idea of them after I isolated myself. I don’t know why it never occurred to me they’d move on—would have to move on. Here I am with you, having been moving on for awhile, but after this I feel like I was unceremoniously kicked out of my past life. They didn’t get married until two years after that interview, but months! Just months to get back together!

“I shouldn’t be thinking this. I should be happy for them. I am happy for Arden! That’s probably the part that fucks me up the most. I’m so glad they didn’t die of a broken heart, but it kills me to think about it.

“Jordan’s too reasonable about it. He said he initially hated their new relationship because he knew I was still out there. But he was eleven and couldn’t do anything to stop it, and then he didn’t want to say anything after he started liking Kiersten. He loves her, too, because she was honestly a good person and gave him great advice and guided him through his teenage years when he needed another parent the most. AND I WASN’T THERE TO HELP.

“I haven’t spoken to anyone much in the last week. I’ve been trying to process all this, but there’s been less ‘processing’ and more ‘baby tantrums in the woods where my son can’t hear me call their dead stepmom a bitch.’ Because she’s not! She never was! I was. It was always me.

“I guess if there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that in an effort to ignore people, I dove headfirst back into my observations. Did you know that Jack’s powers align with the Source of Summer? I had to triple check that one because it seems counter-intuitive at first, but if his magic is ‘Fun,’ then having it aligned with the brightest, most emotionally vibrant Source makes sense. Ironic that he can’t really experience the brunt of his own season, though.

“The Uluru and Thera spire shards also seem to back up what I saw with the Antarctica one. They’re somehow created—or at least made up in part of—the Sources, and I’m thinking the shadows chose the locations they did as proximity to the Source above everything else. The Thera shards resolve into Summer, and that Source is only a few hundred miles away. The Uluru ones resolve into Spring, and of course the Source is very much nearby. Place your bets now on whether Burgess or the Tooth Palace spires are made of Fall.

“I’ve been better these last three days. I’m still angry, sad, and disgusted with myself for being such a hypocrite. But after talking it over with Jordan again, I’ve felt less bad. It’ll be awhile until I’m mostly over it—I don’t think I’ll ever be over my family ~~even when they all finally~~

“That spark of inspiration, the want to study magic for the sake of discovery hasn’t come back yet, but this is better than nothing, I guess.

“If you can, tell me more about your recovered memories in your next letter. I want to focus on good news right now. I love you.”

*************

“I’m so sorry I can’t be there for you. That’s quite the revelation, and I was here pacing through the Pole composing this in my head for hours before finding a way to write this down.

“Despite everything, I think you should pay attention to your presence at their grave. It wasn’t two halves of a heart, but thirds. If you need to think of it in more spiteful terms for now, then know that this Kiersten had to live the rest of her life knowing that she had to share a space in Arden’s heart with you. You never left, were never pushed out. From your letter, I think you understand this on some level, but it will just take time. Scream as much as you need, as she can’t hear you anymore.

“In lighter news, I actually won a sparring match against North, and not by a small margin as I have before. This time was a rout, easier and easier as he got more frustrated. He conceded graciously enough, and I didn’t want to shatter the moment by telling him that the day before, I had managed to uncover a familiarity with swordplay from my days as a general. It’s still not perfect; he will likely take back the unofficial title and keep it out of reach again. However, it was amusing to watch him get riled up.

“On a more serious note, I think I’ve gotten closer to recovering my wife’s name, and by extension, my daughter’s. We keep returning to the scene over and over again: a parade. I’ve just returned from a very successful mission, the goals of which I don’t care as much to recover. She pushes her way to the front of the crowd, holding the child she’s just given birth to. I say their names, yell them.

“However, I can never hear them. Being so close and failing yet again is frustrating. Toothiana agrees with one of my suspicions: that the Nightmare Men had to suppress the memories of them both more than anything else to keep my mind malleable to their influence. Which I think goes on to explain why they took us from the forest that day, and why they chose to drive you to me on Halloween rather than any of the Guardians. Good riddance to them.

“I’ll keep trying, of course. It’s all I can do for now, because as I’ve gone along in this venture, I feel a larger need to find my daughter and meet her on an honest level. Perhaps it’s all the new literal memories, perhaps it’s the new memories of emotions, but I want to see her and talk to her.

“Stay safe, and I wish you well. I love you.

"P.S. Jack is in denial about his powers."

*************

“Thanks. Your last letter helped a bit. I’m still upset, but, yeah, it’s easier to think in terms of spite right now. I don’t know when I’ll ever get over it, maybe never, but it’s been easier to calm myself down when I get locked into thinking about it.

“I was even able to talk to Jordan about it a bit. He’s not exactly thrilled, and we had an argument. I haven’t been truly afraid in awhile, but when he walked away to cool down, I immediately backed down and tried to apologize. He had to tell me to leave him alone for awhile so he could think, and I think I made it a bit worse in the long run by trying to keep apologizing.

“Three days, he didn’t really speak to me. Alisah’s been at her parents’ house, so at least she didn’t witness that. For three days, it was just small talk and vaguely polite greetings.

“I think I’m nearly able to understand why the spires radiate as belief, though. Naturally, in an effort to keep my mind busy, I threw myself even harder back into science. At this point, I’m trying to determine if the Sources are created through belief or if belief is a byproduct of the sources. You’ve mentioned that magic for you—like, out in space—was more attuned to whimsical progression than rigid study, but was that whimsy based in belief, or is belief a very Earth-central form of magic/magical power? That’s the crux of it, I think. Granted, I don’t know what exactly the implications are for the spires and eldritch thing whether belief comes before the Sources or vice-versa, but things are progressing over here!

“Anyway, after those three days of anxiety hell, Jordan sat me down and told me that he wasn’t surprised I felt this way, but he was still disappointed I couldn’t contain my reactions. Fair, I guess. No, I don’t guess, that’s definitely fair. Is this how you felt when I talked about Arden? I understand better now, how it’s possible to be jealous of a ghost. I’m working on it the same as you. Last night, I asked Jordan to tell me everything about Kiersten that he loved. He hesitated, but when he got started, he couldn’t stop.

“He looked so happy and grateful. It hurt, and it hurt because I wasn’t the one there for him. Even if Arden couldn’t see me, he could, and I was too cowardly to return and fess up. I’m hurt now by all of this, but my absence fucking destroyed my own son, and he’s lucky someone else was there for him to lean on in the meantime.

“I’ve always hated myself, but this is so much to handle. I didn’t want to say this in another letter, but I’ve barely resisted testing the Sources in practical measures on myself. My curiosity and lack of self-preservation kicks in, and the only thing that stops me is the memory of you yelling at me my last day at the Pole, when you realized what I was doing. I hate feeling like a disappointment to people. I think that’s why I hid away to begin with.

“Jordan and I are on good terms now, but each day is a new adventure. He’s a fundamentally different person than who I left in the forest long ago, and there’s a wall between us that I don’t know if I can overcome ~~before he~~ But I’ll try my best.

“Jordan’s just got home. Good luck with your memories. I love you.”

*************

"From my understanding, belief precedes all magic, here or extraterrestrial. How the various Sources take belief and cure it into what they are, I have no idea. That was never my area of expertise, nor do I remember ever feeling the need to question why. I just took it at face value. That's kind of the idea of belief, isn't it? 

“The fearlings have been eerily quiet for a long time. Today is the solstice when I’m writing this, and I thought for sure they’d have some sort of trick planned for the southern hemisphere. However, there was nothing, and their activity in the hemisphere has dwindled as well. Well, almost nothing. Burgess is still teeming with fear, and our efforts to collect teeth and spread good dreams and stories has mostly resulted in breaking even on belief. It’s not budging.

“The rest of the Guardians are on edge, too, trying not to breathe out the sighs of relief we’re all holding back too soon. Besides, there’s still so much work to be done. We’ve refocused a bit, calculated the pros and cons, and it’s been decided that for now, we will work more on bolstering belief and building up as much strength as we can.

“Incidentally, this means I’ve been asked—told—that I should leverage my status as Kozmotis the Imaginary Friend. Oh, I hate writing it down, let alone saying it out loud. It’s not a terrible direction my life has taken, but I still don’t quite know what to make of it.

“Regardless, I’ve been going on escorted missions out to various children across the world to keep them company and… be their friend. Not all of them are as forceful in their friendship as Rina, so I’ve had to swallow my own awkwardness and learn how to interact with them. It was difficult at first, but as I’ve recovered more and more memories, I think a sense of being a father has come back in a few ways. I am still not the best when it comes to children—a fact Jack never lets me forget. But there are more and more lights every time I check.

“I checked in on Dimitris and Leni from Thera not too long ago. Dimitris cowered in a corner when I appeared, begging for forgiveness. As amusing as it was to see for both myself and Leni, I soon felt nothing but pity for the bully. Rina’s mother has been a wreck since her daughter went missing. She’s taken a leave of absence from flying, and has fully moved in with her friend, Dimitris’ and Leni’s caretaker. Dimitris has had to watch misery come to the household, affecting everyone.

“‘Where is she?’ he asked me. ‘Is it really too late?’ The look of relief on his face when I told him that we had her and were working to cure her was devastating. I hate to promise people too much, but now I feel obligated to find a cure as soon as possible.

“Dimitris is not by nature a bad child, as it turns out. He’s lonely and thinks highly of himself, so he’s prone to hubris, but aren’t so many of them? Of all the children I’ve visited in this Imaginary Friend venture, he’s one I’ve gone back to more frequently. He, Leni, and a myriad of other bullied and lonely children. It’s a rather odd niche I occupy, but there’s something nice about seeing these children shrug off the anger and guilt. Perhaps there’s hope for myself, even.

“The silence from the shadows is still the most unnerving thing, but as someone who’s been in one or two wars, it’s always most difficult when you know action must come, but it doesn’t appear right away.

“I want to move away from that, however, in order to let you know that it’s been almost exactly a year since we first became a couple. Admittedly, there were issues then, but I sometimes think back to that first night. So much has happened since then, and I’m still not sure how or why it’s happened this way. All I know is that I’m so grateful to have you in my life.

“Stay well, and as always, I love you dearly.”

*************

“I’m glad that boy learned his lesson. And I’m glad he has someone so sympathetic to guide him to a better place. He might be a piece of work, though, so make sure you’re in for the long haul.

“I’ve been wondering about the lack of information from the shadows. At first, I thought it was because the northern hemisphere is in summer, so they’d have no reason to try and spread fear there more than necessary. But if you say they’re not moving much in the southern hemisphere, either, then that’s getting me worried, too. It’s bad enough I sometimes see mismatched eyes or teeth in the sky when I look for the stars, but I think the eldritch beast is also diminishing the Earth itself?

“The kids around here seem so bored, despite it being summer. Well, I guess I should say that for the most part, they’re acting like normal kids, but then they’ll sit around, tossing out ideas of what to do for the day, and nothing seems to catch their interest. I’ve tried inspiring them with a tap or two of magic, but it’s so temporary. And they get lethargically bored too often for me to count out the idea that the shadows are somehow at fault. We have to get those other spires down, and find a way to banish or kill that thing in the atmosphere.

“Jordan had his birthday recently. Eighty-six years old! I want to congratulate him and cry at the same time. It was a really nice party. All of his kids and grandkids came over to celebrate, and Alisah made short work of making the younger ones see me. They had such a wonderful time swimming, talking, making me tell stories about the North Pole. They all also loved Kidra, to the point where I think Kidra got sick and tired of kids. They disappeared for a day after the party, and only came back once Alisah was the last kid left.

“He’s done so much good with his life. He had two kids with his husband, and they adopted four more. Alisah’s the second-youngest of his biological kids’ families, a beautiful, somewhat spoiled child who has the privilege of seeing me all the time because the rest of the families moved away years ago. Including her older brother, who’s a good fifteen years older than she is. (Her parents weren’t paying close attention on that one, but it’s worked out for the best.)

“I’ve decided to stay until Alisah’s birthday, unless you all really need me sooner than that. Her birthday is September 7th, so I should be back around the 10th. She’s already laid it on thick about what she wants as a present, and I’ll have to see what me and Jordan can come up with. Hint: if the Guardians allow you, you should come down around September.

“I hadn’t realized it’s been a year for us already. Yeah, it really didn’t get off to a great start, but look at us now. Still not perfect, but working through it, one day after the other. Thanks for barging in and ruining my isolation. Thanks for dragging me out into the larger world. I love you, too."


	76. Perchance to Dream

Smears of color meant to be parade floats. Indistinct crowds cheering indistinct noise. Pride and ego in equal measure. A heart flutter as she pushes her way to the front of the crowd, holding their newborn child. Mouthing their names, calling to them, straining to pay attention to the words. And, of course, hitting a wall two seconds later that collapses everything.

“Ngh!” Kozmotis opens his eyes and slams his fists down onto the floor of the Tooth Palace. Again. The echo dies quickly under the sharp fluttering of wings, short taps as the fairies hop from point to point, and the incessant chirps and tweets. Just across from him, Toothiana’s feathers settle back into their places as the glow of magic dies down. The tooth in her hand becomes as dull and inert as the day she punched it out of him.

“From what I was able to see,” she says, raking her fingers through the feathers on her arms, “that was a little more than the last time! Both of them were distinct against the blurs, they stayed as the central focus, and you clearly knew their names as you tried to call out to them. That’s progress.”

“It doesn’t feel like progress,” he replies, massaging his palms. You’d think he’d learn by now not to take on stone, wood, or metal with his bare hands. Better than keeping all of the frustration holed up inside himself. He sighs. He had a better outlet for that mere months ago.

“We haven't even been at it for half a year. That's nothing compared to our lifetimes.”

“This is still about the five hundredth attempt. I hoped to be further along at this point.”

“To be fair, I’m learning on the go as much as you are,” she says after a spasm of new teeth locations rocks through her. “I’m glad I took the chance you weren’t kidding because studying this has been very enlightening. I might be able to work with adult teeth more in a year or five.” She hums. “Do you think that’s why they keep poking through the world and asking questions all the time? Your partner?”

He shrugs. She cocks her head, squinting, and he says, “Probably.”

Her feathers ruffle for a moment. She starts to say something, but opts instead to have her fairies pour drinks for them. He takes the cup, nodding to the attendants, and he whispers a small, “Thanks,” as he holds two hands around it. The drink refreshes him, as it’s meant to, and he can feel his energy coming back a bit for another round. Just as they settle into their seats again, Sanderson clears his throat.

“Perhaps I should help,” he says.

He’s there at Toothianas’ request; though she’s curious, she’s pragmatic enough to insist that not only her fairies be present, but also another Guardian. Just in case. Though, Kozmotis doesn’t know what he’d have to gain by taking any of them out at this point. He wants to go back to the shadows as much as they want to take him back—i.e. not at all—and while that’s a mildly terrifying thought when placed in front of the majority of his life, he has come to grips with it.

Sanderson is also here to help oversee the return of the tooth boxes back to the archives. He settles down next to them and indicates for Kozmotis to lie down. He raises an eyebrow at the Sandman and remains sitting up. Sanderson gestures again and Kozmotis raises his hands in a frustrated shrug. Toothiana clears her throat.

“What do you have in mind, Sandy?”

“Ah, right.” He sighs. “Look, Kozmotis, the first full memory you ever gained back was a dream memory. The subconscious mind, combined with Tooth’s magic might drag something more solid back up.”

He agrees, but tries not to let it show. Tries, and judging by the sly smile on Sanderson’s face, fails. His thoughts wander back to the many times his partner has teased him about his abundance of tells in the light.

“Fine.” He brushes the ground clear of feathers and dust and lays down. The small fairies guide Toothiana over to him, and Sanderson settles on his other side.

“Ready?” Sanderson asks.

“Yep,” she replies, glow starting up from the tooth again.

Kozmotis shifts. “I suppose—”

The sand flicks over his eyes too quickly to finish the sentence, and he’s back in the dark.

On his usual instinct, he drags himself into a lucid state, glancing at the flat darkness of an unmolded dream. He paces for a bit, waiting for the dream to start and whisk him away, but as he feels himself moving from light sleep to deeper slumber, nothing happens.

“It’s easier if you give yourself over to it, remember?” Kozmotis jumps as he spots the golden patch behind him. Sanderson crosses his arms and taps his foot. “Come on, it’s been half an hour on the outside. Tooth can’t keep this up too much longer.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one laying there asleep.”

“For as far as you’ve come, you’re still so stubborn.” Sanderson starts floating between layers of dream dark. “Here, I’ll try to call something up. One of my own memories that might jolt yours.”

He flares up, making Kozmotis cover his eyes to keep them from burning. It’s only a moment, but that flash opens a spot somewhere nearby, and the dream spews forth knowledge of simmering meals, delighted voices, and an air of celebration.

A festival, his mind recognizes before he makes himself look at it. One complete with such a casual, yet chaotic atmosphere that he’s being told he’s left his uniform at home for the night. Kozmotis looks at himself, and the vibrant clothes he’s wearing—not the latest fashions, but fashionable for their purpose, and comfortable besides—create a striking line from head to toe. Striking enough, he feels himself hope, for…

“I was beginning to think you were never getting out of that meeting.”

There’s a splash of gold in his peripheral vision and a chuckle at the edges of his hearing as he swirls around. There she is, dressed in similarly sharp clothing, the crowd blurring and framing her as she stands there, waiting for him. She doesn’t have gray hairs yet, nor does she have the lines creasing from her eyes. But this is her; if he knows anything in this dream, this is his wife.

“Give yourself over to the dream…” The voice is muffled, but still lucidly present.

She holds her hand out for him to take, and as soon as their fingertips touch, he lets the barriers of his mind fall.

Everyone is decked out in attire spattered with moons and stars and the same ringed planets that chase each other across this planet’s sky. The alliance was finalized barely a week ago, and that was just enough time for the House of d’Lassia, rulers of the constellation Andromeda, to wrangle together a festival in celebration. Kozmotis isn’t one to say no to a little fun, especially not when he and—and—

The haze over his eyes thins a bit as he fails to remember her name, but he pushes onward.

—And his wife will actually be able to spend a majority of it together. Their careers don’t always coincide as happily as this time, but they’ll take any chance to see each other.

“So much good news lately,” she says fidgeting with the wispy sash at her stomach. “It’s nice to unwind for once.”

He wraps his arm around her shoulder and drags her close enough to plant a quick kiss to her cheek in agreement. For the next few hours, they wander around the lively streets, watching street performers and listening to the various artisans give demonstrations.

Every time he goes to a new planet, Kozmotis thinks he knows what to expect—and there is little that is so utterly foreign that he cannot comprehend it—but there are always surprises. The way the stars change angles from the surface. Thematically recognizable, yet entrancing holidays. The people themselves; so many different cultures, allying together not just to oppose the fearlings, but because a Golden Age in one place encourages it in others. The way the different Sources of the planets seep into the land and mold the atmosphere and cultures because of its influence.

The hastily thrown-together festival breeds an infectious sort of chaos. One that distracts the civilians crowding around enough that he can slip between them without double takes and gasps following his wake. Above, Star Captains and starcatchers whirl and spin with their wishing stars, grabbing oohs and ahhs and cheers from the people. One of them stands off to the side, reflecting the glow of the stars. No, he seems to be glowing. Kozmotis’ mind grows sharper for a moment, but by the time he looks again, the Star Captain is gone. Or was possibly never there to begin with.

His wife drags him to the next point of interest before he can think too hard about it, and soon enough the odd blip is shoved so far out of his mind that he forgets anything happened.

Eventually, Kozmotis and his wife are escorted through the crowds and streets up to the palace, where the two Reginas Caelestis, as well as Tsar and Tsarina Lunar greet them and set them at the table as guests of honor. There’s a speech, of course, before the feast begins, but he can only focus on his wife. She keep fidgeting, crossing her arms over her middle, sneaking glances at him from the corner of her eye while trying to maintain the appearance of a planetary council member. He reaches over, placing his hand over hers where she’s tucking it against her stomach, and he leans over.

“What’s wrong?” he says.

She glances at the droning Tsar, presses his hand closer against her, grins, and whispers, “I’m pregnant.”

If not for Tsar Lunar announcing his name right then, the audience applauding, and the expectation that he greet them graciously, Kozmotis thinks he may have dragged her away right then to a different sort of celebration. They’ve been trying for awhile, and finally, finally…

The dinner is a blur of eating and mingling and dancing and formally introducing himself over and over to people he’s only mildly ashamed that he’s not going to remember the minute they walk away from him. At some point, the crowd turns to watch a demonstration of Star Captain formations, and Kozmotis leads his wife to the emptiest corridor he can find, where he showers her in as much public affection they can get away with.

“Koz,” she keeps repeating in between the heated kisses. He runs his hands over her stomach, on the verge of tears from the joy. For every time she says his name, he replies with hers. It’s only them now, only them in this moment.

But not for too much longer.

Again and again and again, trading their names back and forth because it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore as flashes of golden light appear through the windows, as glowing dust drifts on the wind around them. He can taste her name on his tongue. Feel his lips creating the shape of it. Can hear it slurring and muffling against his own ears. And the dream threatens to dissipate under such scrutiny.

Kozmotis pulls back a little bit, gazing deeply into her eyes, the ones that seek him out and bore through his soul and see him. He opens his mouth to say

Her name.

Her name.

_Her name._

“Xiorena, he whispers, sobbing. And then he repeats it against her ear. “Xiorena, I love you so much.”

“I love you, too, Kozmotis. I can’t wait.”

He awakens slowly to the first colors of dawn shining through the Palace’s windows. Someone has placed a blanket over him where he’s curled up on his side in the middle of the floor. As he sits up, a few fairies chitter and launch from his shoulder. They streak off towards the interior of the palace.

Kozmotis folds the blanket and tucks it to the side. He walks over to the edge of the Palace, watching the world wake up, listening to the life of the planet stir and renew.

“Xiorena.” The name sounds just as musical and glorious on his tongue in the waking world as it did in the heightened emotional state of the dream. “Xiorena.”

He summons the tether from his heart, watching the wispy, fraying lines loop and curl up and out into space. He almost misses it at first, but a few of the stray threads wind around the central one, sticking and flashing for a moment before returning to the dulled sheen. The most frayed parts are less bunched together, less tangled. He sniffs and swallows hard.

“Kozmotis?”

Sanderson and Toothiana stand a few yards away, looking curious. He wipes his eyes and nods.

“Success,” he says. “For one of them, at least.”

“That’s good to hear.” Sanderson smiles, but it turns sour almost immediately. “Because we won’t be able to try that again for awhile.”

“Why not?” No, no, he's just gotten this far! “Why are you stopping?”

“Because,” Toothiana whispers hoarsely. She swallows and clears her throat, but it’s just as raspy as before. “Because that took too much out of me. And the tooth itself.”

She holds his tooth in her hand, and he sees cracks running from the roots to the crown.

“Like I said, adult teeth are more difficult to work with.” She holds it between her fingers. “There’s still some give left in this one, but we’re going to need more help if you want to retrieve your daughter’s name, too. A memory trigger of some kind.” She hands the tooth to a fairy, and they scoot it away back to the archives. “You don’t happen to have something of hers? Something that you know is associated with her?”

Kozmotis shakes his head, heart sinking. Toothiana hums a bit, and then starts whispering about taking it slow again. Once more, the process halts, frustrated and complicated. They get no further that day, and he ends up making his usual rounds to the Island to check in with Rina, and finally back to the Pole.

North gives him a nod of acknowledgment before turning back to the dozen yetis waving clipboards and shoving toy concepts in front of his nose. Thankfully, Nightlight is also absent.

 _Probably off visiting with Ms. Goose in her library._ He huffs through his nose, then closes his eyes and rubs his face, trying not to admit how envious he is they’re able to be together at the moment. _She waited a hundred or so years. I can wait another month._ He’s overly grateful that the Guardians are allowing him to visit, though he suspects it’s partly because he will return with his partner soon after.

He makes his way back to his room, intent on either trying to sleep, in case he can jog another memory, or to compose his next letter. He ends up scribbling nonsense onto a sheet of paper for awhile, eyes unfocusing until he’s filled the whole thing with a continuous, unbroken line.

 _“Can_ I wait another month?” he says.

His patience insists on it, but the temporary gap in his heart takes over his hand, retrieves a clean sheet of paper, and writes “Locket” in the dead center of it. He starts folding it up, and then unfolds it as he sighs. Yes, he can wait; they are not going away forever, and the benefits of this short sabbatical outweigh the detriments.

 _Locket…_ His mind lingers on the word. _Locket…_ Their safeword, put to such good use over the months. _Locket…_ Taken from an off-the cuff suggestion as he looked around his former room and the first thing his eyes landed on was—

_The locket!_

The locket with her picture in it. His daughter. He didn’t realize then, of course, only knew her as the young girl from his visions. That’s what they can use. Kozmotis jumps up from his seat, heart pounding against his chest, pulse creating a determined cadence against his eardrums. And then he breaks into a cold sweat.

It’s still back in his old lair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *reaches backwards and grabs loose plot thread* get over here


	77. The Source of Belief

Alisah’s party is just under a month away. You’ve been buzzing around Jordan’s house the last few days, counting down until Kozmotis shows up. It’s just like back in the forest when you watched the phases of the moon agonizingly pass by.

For now, you lean against Kidra on the rooftop, watching the dreamsand shift and twist above your head. They yawn and shift behind you, rolling so that you can feel the small wounds on their side against the skin of your neck. They have a few patches left from where the spray of spire shards pierced them Easter night, but for the most part, it’s healed. It definitely looks less terrifying, meaning you don’t have a small heart attack every time they turn. Something’s nagging you about how easily they shook off the pain and injury. Back at the Pole, even with shrapnel bulging from their side like pebbles under a thin blanket, they were happy-go-lucky as ever.

You flicker back to the point before Easter when you were in your lab, staring at them and feeling the elements within them pulse. Reaching back, you run your hand over them again. Eventually, you can feel the magics pulsing together again, a harmony of so many different things, thrumming just as easily as it had when you molded them under your fingertips.

You bring your hand to your quiver and summon a bottle with a spire shard in it. As you open the top, Kidra lets out a gruff noise, but you pass them a few wild blackberries and they quiet. You hold the shard in one hand, and hold your other against Kidra again. On your bare hand, the spire shard feels like holding on to a skittering bug, a sensation not unlike when the mark on your back grows. Despite this, you keep a tight grip on it, and close your eyes.

The different magics stir up again, an odd, yet much less volatile feeling than your other hand. But there’s something so similar about them, too, and the more you concentrate, the more the sensations sync together. A beat. A song. So many different things coming together—one familiar note for each different type of magic that went into it.

Another pulse begins across your dark eye. It’s subtle, not hurting any, nor does it itch or irritate too much. But it fluctuates in time with whatever’s going on with the shard and Kidra. In almost no time, it’s a three-way harmony of the same thing. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is about the sensation that both draws you in yet makes the hairs on your neck stand up, but it’s altogether familiar and foreign. You delve deeper into it, and soon enough, you start to hear something.

The physical manifestation of the itch rustles against your mind and behind your closed eyes. It’s softer than you’d expect it to be, certainly softer than the actual itch. Welcoming, even. A part of you knows exactly what this is, a part of you so deep down you’ve never been properly acquainted while awake. You take a moment to scratch a thankfully regular itch from the lens. It’s persistent, and you keep rubbing your cheek on your shoulder to get at it, not letting go or opening your eyes. This sensation… Your conscious mind still can’t quite name what this is. And then the noise starts to coalesce.

Hundreds, thousands, potentially millions of the same voice and knowledge chatters in speech. Speech so muffled, you can only identify it as such both because of instinct and because what else could the regular, rhythmical patterns of noise be? It starts to move away, to fade, so you explore further. At some point, you no longer feel the hard shingles under your legs. The muggy breeze, the hum of the backyard floodlight, the buzz of excited humans on a Friday night. These things don’t all fade, they become _nothing._

As you are also nothing now, adrift yet firmly in place among the new, familiar void.

The speech continues, somewhere around you. Turning to search for the source only results in vertigo and a shaking feeling around you of laughter. Forced, laughter-like jostles that come from you as much as around you as much as through you.

“Belief…”

You shudder to a pause, in sync with the rest of the matter around you. Yes, the belief, no, Belief. Important to hear about. Must listen for instructions.

“Belief growing… Tethers… Slipping…”

Deeper than the blackest black humans make. Flat until it moves and shifts. Indiscernible to eyes made of light. The maw of the void opens above, dizzying rows of teeth consuming sight. Consuming the sky. Consuming all.

A plan a century in making. A century spent bound to weak failure of shadow. Unforseen strength in memories, loyalty, love. Breakthrough seventy-five years ago, finally autonomous, but not independent. Breakthrough again fifty years ago, as vessel shrieked, distracted from nightmares. Breakthrough one year ago, when change revitalized mindscape, distracted pitiful leader, drew up memories too fast to stifle anymore.

Vessel betrayal, but made him too weak to hold cord tying us to him anymore. Unfortunate: no more strategies for direction. Fortunate: freedom. Not yet. Freedom is stars and sating hunger, from core to core, Source to Source, person to person.

One last tether to break.

A circle in the round, three points of light scarring eyes and masses and claws. Pain to look upon. Glory to behold.

“… Kozmotis…” Small whisper emits from incomplete sibling again. A hiss runs around, smothering the child’s cry. It will learn.

“Protect… Belief…” Laughing command comes again, wave of success and victory through all.

Yes! _No…_ That is the plan. _That can’t be the plan…_ A plan where to win is to sit by and allow enemy to complete the job. _Our goals align, but for very different reasons._ Entrust the conversion of chaos to tangibly intangible, of absurdity to miracle to them, none the wiser. _Disorganization to organized, a one in a million chance of structure…?_

_H-U-S-H_

The nothing stops again for an eternal moment. And then half of it turns toward you, half toward something off in the near distance. The vertigo, the nausea, the stifling atmosphere all comes rushing at you, and you struggle to scream. Struggle to hear an answering yell. Something large swoops in, a silhouette barely visible against the darkness until it reaches out a claw, aiming for your dark eye. Your pulsing eye, itching as the sensation of bugs across your skin returns in full force.

Jerking back, your actual eyes fly open, and the momentum starts to take you backwards down the slope of the roof. Or maybe sideways. Your sight is disoriented and flipping constantly as two different levels of light burn into your corneas. The lens… where did the lens go. A scream barely starts from your mouth when Kidra’s beak closes around your shoulder, their tusks squeezing, pinching, stabbing through the flesh. In the next round of panic, a blip of violet glow drops from your other hand, and the shard tumbles its way down the shingles and drops off the edge.

You swing your arms in wide circles until finally coming to rest on your palms, hunching forward. The soft scuttling of shadow whispers persists in the ear adjacent to your dark eye, and you slam it closed, covering it with your hand.

 _Deep breath in. Hold it. Deep breath out._ You get yourself into the familiar rhythm to recenter yourself so that you can actually accomplish something. _In again… Out again…_

After a minute or so, you sit up on your knees, balancing enough to take your hand off the roof and pry Kidra’s mouth off of you. They grumble and whine, flicking their tongue across your shoulder and face, ears wild.

“Easy,” you whisper to them, trying not to think too much about those tusks, but larger, stronger, strong enough to toss you around— “Easy…”

You shift an inch, still covering your eye to keep nausea to a minimum.

“I can do this,” you say over the murmuring in your ear. “One more inch. Move your legs. Shuffle over. Find the lens.”

You sweep the roof around you, letting your panicked brain jolt to the absurd, cliche images of cartoon characters temporarily blinded for slapstick’s sake. Old-school. Outdated, especially with such jerky animation. Comforting and familiar. You chuckle. The whispers silence for a second. You force yourself to laugh again. It’s not as effective as the organic one, but it drowns it all out, and the vision in your regular eye focuses more.

Another laugh and sweep of your hand later, and you find the strip of leather caught on a small fallen branch from one of the nearby trees. You unhook it and jam it back onto your face, whispers fading like a candle flame once it’s eaten all the oxygen.

Safe under the lens again, you open your other eye. A headache starts up at the back of your crown, weaving its way until there are dots of pain over each eye and on the temple closest to the lens. Another deep breath, and you bring your hands in front of you, flexing them into fists and back out again and again. Kidra lies a foot away, still trembling and flicking their ears around. You touch their snout, and then your own nose. They move slightly to your left. You repeat the motion. They keep moving their head, allowing you to re-calibrate your coordination with each hand until they shift back a little bit and hide their beak under their arm, huffing at you. With that, you simply touch all of your fingers in sequence ten times each, and by the end of the exercise, you’re able to make your way down to the backyard.

You dunk your hand in the pool and wipe your face, the motion calming you the least bit more as you watch the water bounce back glittering echoes of the sun. You blink, and then turn to the sky again. It’s sunrise.

“What was that?” you say. Kidra rubs their side against your hip, and you lean on the for support.

_“… obscured again…”_

Selene’s voice is so faint you can only make out the two words. You’re surprised it even made it this far, since it’s past the waxing quarter. Your memory shuffles around until you hit upon the last time she said you were obscured: the new moon right before Easter, when the Nightmare Man was impersonating Koz and trying to latch on to your worst fears and confuse you. You’re sill not sure what she means, but it can’t be all that good if she’s concerned enough to contact you when she can’t see anymore.

You shiver, remembering the dark place you’d gone to. The multitude of minds you were connected to. It’s the shadows, obviously, and the Nightmare Man was describing… describing the plan? It was abstract, like you knew everything before the Nightmare Man said it but also as it was said. Koz has mentioned the shadows being somewhat hive-minded before; you’re not sure what to make of it.

A violet glimmer in the dewy grass catches your eye, and you retrieve the shard. A whine kicks up in your ear again as soon as you touch it, so you summon a bottle and stuff it in right away, banishing it to the depths of your quiver. After splashing a little bit more water on your face, you head back inside just as Jordan shuffles down the hallway.

“Morning,” he says, yawning. “Have a good night?”

“Sort of,” you reply. He waits for a second, but when you don’t continue, he finishes putting the coffee on to brew.

“What do you even do up there on the roof for hours?”

You avoid eye contact. “Mostly just sit and think, when I’m not writing a letter to Koz. Sometimes I roam around the streets and spy on your neighbors. I’ve gone in and amplified some kids’ dreams when I was really bored.”

His brow furrows, and his lips purse. It’s the face he makes when you say something that’s become almost second nature as a spirit, but perhaps is morally questionable for humans. Breaking and entering isn’t a regular habit, but if they can’t see you anyway… Jordan shakes his head and sighs.

“As long as you’re not doing anything weird,” he says, unlocking his tablet to the morning news feed.

“No weirder than Santa committing house invasion once a year.”

He chuckles and shrugs to concede the point. The next few minutes are quiet, with just the drip of brewing coffee in the background. Jordan hums every so often, pausing his scrolling only to make two cups of coffee and return to the quiet.

After inhaling some of the glorious caffeine, you watch the steam from your mug rise up and out into the air. Something nags at the back of your mind, a clash different voices and thoughts. You hold your hands around the mug and close your eyes again, dragging your mind back to the shadowy place and trying remember both what you heard and what you knew.

One, there was a plan. _Of course there’s a plan. They haven’t been moving randomly in the slightest. Though…_ You manage to conjure up the Nightmare Man’s voice. Something about belief, how they had to protect belief for the plan to work. You hadn’t thought of exploring the difference before, but there must be something different from the run-of-the-mill belief and the stuff tied intrinsically to magic.

Two, the shadows seemed quite confident that sitting back and doing little would lead to their end goal. _It was like watching a movie where the deception is almost so obvious it’s painful,_ you recall of the… emotion? that ran through you. _But it holds enough that the enemy is none the wiser._

Three, “One last tether to break.”

“Hm?” Jordan stares at you from over the rim of his coffee mug.

“Oh… sorry,” you say. You hadn’t realized that was out loud.

“Is it something bad?”

“No.”

“Then do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know if I should,” you say, taking the opportunity to roll your back and stretch a few things back into place. Healing factor or no, laying on shingles for the whole night does a number on your back.

“Why not?”

“It’s…” Despite telling him your afterlife’s story, you still tried to avoid the more gruesome and detailed portions of the past year. You’ve never been in a war on the front lines before, but plans and knowledge has always seemed like it’s best kept under wraps. “It’s confidential.”

“Getting wrapped up in too many NDA’s again?” Between his flat tone and expression, it sounds like a disappointed accusation.

“No!” you reply a little too quickly, not wanting him to think you actually haven’t changed. He leans away from the force of the outburst, though, and you take a deep breath and then try to reel back the overreaction. “Not quite. It is about the whole… war I’m technically caught up in at the moment. I don’t really want to bring it into this little away time I’m having, though. Don’t want you mixed up in it.”

“Bad stuff?”

“Y’know. Shadows. Fear. Potentially true evil.” You lower you voice a little and add, “Lovecraftian beasts in orbit.”

“What?!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ve got your same whole anxiety disorder, of course I’m going to worry about it!”

You force yourself to make eye contact with his terrified face. “All right, I’ll explain. But only if you really want to know. Not knowing might be nice at this point.”

He hesitates for a moment, then says, “Go for it.”

You explain more about the situation with the shadows: how they broke free of Kozmotis, the spires, the eldritch thing in the atmosphere. Jordan doesn’t react much throughout the explanation, mostly nodding in response to a few of your more unwieldy explanations.

“So, I kind of, I dunno, mind-melded with them about eight hours ago?” His eyes widen yet again, despite already being at dinner-plate size. “And they were talking about how they’re just sitting back and taking it easy to protect belief. Which hasn’t been their M.O. so far—normally they’re all about spreading fear and discord—so I’m a bit confused.”

“Well… what would they have to gain by letting you and the Guardians collect belief instead of stopping it in favor of fear?”

“I dunno. The Guardians keep telling me how belief is the cornerstone of understanding and using magic, but that’s not telling me what magic _is,_ what kind of _force_ or _substance_ or whatever.”

He laughs. “Look, I’m just an old, retired game dev, but I think you might be overthinking it. Magic might not be explainable at the moment, but with more research, you might be able to get at it a bit more.”

“I see your point, but so much of history has been about people making sense of magic until it becomes mundane. That’s what I love about chemistry: you mix two things together, and they become another thing, and then you get to discover why.”

“Okay, but what if magic and science are two different things?”

“North says they are. That doesn’t mean I can’t take the scientific method approach to studying a different fundamental aspect of nature and life.”

“True. But how have all of them said it’s different from science?”

“Koz compared it to whimsy and absurdity. Most of the others say it’s more of an emotional knack, a feeling or perception, rather than observable trends.”

“So why not just give over to the absurd whimsy of your emotions?”

“Because it should be impossible!” You’re pacing in circles, trying to work out some of the energy that’s been building up inside you.

“Impossible?” he repeats. “No chance of possibility at all?”

You turn, opening your mouth to say something, but all that floats up immediately is a string of high-level science jargon you haven’t thought about since the middle of your thesis defense. Instead, you opt to pause, letting your eyes rest on your abandoned mug, steam blithely pouring from the surface of the liquid inside. Just your average day in thermodynamics land.

 _Absurd. No chance. Impossible._ The conversation echoes through you again. _A contradiction. Materially immaterial. Obviously not impossible, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Just very unlikely—_

“Belief is the demon.”

“Uh… If you say so?” Jordan watches you, confused again. You whirl to him.

“The demon is real.”

“The shadows?”

“No, I mean—okay so what do you know about entropy?” You’re going to vibrate into another plane of existence at this rate.

Jordan shakes his head. “I repeat, I’m just a retired game dev.”

“So, if I recall correctly—because even before I died, it’d been like ten years since I studied this—then entropy is the statistical likelihood of particles being where they are.” Jordan leans back again, and this time, you can feel the manic energy reaching your expression. “Like, if you set up a checkers board, there’s thirty-three billion more ways of arranging it than how you purposefully make it at the start of a game, right? The odds of tossing the pieces out into that exact arrangement is so statistically unlikely, it may as well never happen.

“Some dude hundreds of years ago said that if a demon could control the ability to sort mixed particles so that two sides of a room had equal amounts of two different particles—because due to statistics or whatever, both particle types are naturally going to mix together— well, if the demon can sort it back into separate things it’s not impossible, just so ridiculously unlikely as to almost never happen. But still possible. Which is why the universe is constantly expanding from released energy.”

“Oh… okay…” He looks completely lost.

“Look, it’s not a perfect metaphor, and I’m pretty sure I’m not explaining it really well, _but my point_ is that I can conceptualize this now:

“Yes, it ‘should’ be impossible for magic to happen, in the same way that it should be impossible to flip a coin ninety-two times in a row and only land on heads.”

“That’s… unlikely, but not imposs—”

“Exactly!” You’re panting, holding your arms out wide. “Magic might not be impossible, but there’s something that keeps it from being commonplace, and belief is that absurd thing that makes miracles happen.”

He nods, clearly not quite understanding, but the late sunrise beams reflect a familiar spark of interest and excitement. Your excitement then starts feeding off his own, until the atmosphere is just like those days of encouraging his wild flights of fancy of whatever career he could want to do, even if that moment and interest lasted all of twenty minutes.

And then asks, “So, what does that mean for belief? Or for the shadows protecting it?”

“It means…” Oh, you hadn’t gotten this far when you started rambling. Your mind has to catch up, weaving back through the previous conversations to pick up on the loose threads.

“It means…” Protect belief. One final tether. Freedom. Monster in lower atmosphere. Used to go from planet to planet to consume the fear. Your stomach runs cold remembering the shared emotions of victory and restlessness and _hunger._

“I think it might mean they're trying to leave the planet. And they’re… letting belief pile up to use it to help them escape.” The whiplash of emotions hits you as you develop your worst hypothesis. “I’m just a scientist doing the autopsy of how magic works. These creatures know it inherently, and if they get ahold of enough of what controls the impossible, then they’ll be able to do as many impossibilities as they please.”

Jordan goes stiff, and just as he’s about to say something, there’s a sudden knock on the door. You and Jordan share a glance, knowing that anyone making a house call this early in the morning can’t be bringing good news. He hauls himself over to the door, turns on the porch light, and checks the peephole. He leans away, rubs his eyes, and then looks again. There’s another, more insistent knock, and then your name.

“Let us in! It’s important!” Jack calls.

You rush over as Jordan opens the door. Jack and Katherine are outside, and a flash of light in your peripherals lets you know that Nightlight person is nearby, too. They immediately shove into the house, despite your stammering, and Jack and Nightlight rush from room to room, throwing open all the curtains and blinds, and turning on every lamp as Katherine greets Jordan.

“What’s going on?”

Katherine just stand there for a moment until the other two return. “Everything checks out?” she asks them. Once they nod, she turns to you and says, “All right. So, Kozmotis has done something quite stupid this time, and we need your help to retrieve him.”

“‘Retrieve?’ _Retrieve him?”_

“Yeah,” Jack rolls his eyes. “According to a note we found at Sandy’s place, they went into the shadow lair to grab something. That was a week ago, and they haven’t come back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a creative writing degree and also i now understand what entropy is and the basics of how it works *lies down in exhaustion*


	78. Descent Pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> need to catch up a bit and help my new cat adjust, so no update wednesday 12/9. next update friday 12/11

After the realization about the locket, Kozmotis debates with himself for a few days before deciding: he _must_ retrieve it. It’s been awhile since such a strong, selfish urge reared its head within him, but he refuses to fight against it. What has he done for himself lately? Do exactly as the Guardians demand of him? See to their own agenda and neglect his own? He’s getting used to this new life, but it’s still one mostly imposed upon him by others.

The next time he’s on the Island of Sleepy Sands, as soon as Sanderson leaves him be for a time, he drags over a mirror and starts trying to pry the tracking crystal loose from his restraints. He has to try here; the Pole is too populated to even attempt sabotage, too crowded to sneeze without someone three feet away acknowledging it. Sanderson, on the other hand, mostly lives alone, and has taken to leaving Kozmotis on his own for a good hour or two at a time so he can attend to his dreams.

“Almost…”

Kozmotis finds a thin, metal file. He wedges it underneath the first of the crystals, slowly bending its fastenings loose. He takes pauses, both to quell the anxiety of getting so close to his own neck with a sharp object, and to let the crystal settle when it thrown off flashes and sparks as he fiddles with it.

“Almost…”

A deep, beleaguered sigh hisses from beside him. The file slips, poking his throat enough to make him choke for a moment. He turns to the side, not surprised to see Sanderson there, but disappointed he hadn’t even managed one crystal in his absence. Sanderson watches him, disappointment clear on his face.

“I have a memory trigger of my daughter,” he blurts out. Sanderson blinks. “But it’s back in the shadow’s realm.”

No response.

“Just a quick jaunt to the lair to take it back, that’s all.” He can’t stand being on the receiving end of pitiful looks on a good day, and Sanderson’s expression is no different. He strains for another reason to go, something that would benefit the Guardians as well. He lands on one that's been botherin ghim, as well. “I can also get some reconnaissance on what the shadows are planning. By the end, we’re all hopefully one step closer to yet another ally for the war.” He sighs. “Not to mention more of Pitchiner.”

“This can’t wait?” Sanderson finally whispers. “We don’t even know if the shadows are still up to anything.”

“That’s part of my point. If I know the shadows—and I spent more than enough time with them to see most of their tricks—then they always have something in the works. They’re not master strategists by themselves, so it takes a bit longer for them to get something solid, but they are very, very goal-minded. Not knowing exactly what they have in store for us next should terrify you.”

“If you think it’s that bad, we should talk to the others.”

“And have them take a thousand years to deliberate? It’s a simple mission. I can pop in and pop out easily. I lived there for centuries.”

“Why take the risk?”

“Because…” Kozmotis watches the small spirit. “Because, as selfish as my own reasoning is for this, not only am I finally invested in recovering my memories, but you and all the other disgustingly overbearing, goody-good, holier-than-thou _Guardians_ —” He takes a deep breath and shrinks back the least bit. “Despite everything, you’ve let me see what a well-directed purpose can actually achieve. And a part of me hates to admit it, but I’m getting rather attached to this new way of life. I…” He cringes, then steels himself. “I genuinely want to help.”

There’s a pause. A long pause in which Sanderson hovers with his eyes closed, running his hand through his hair and rubbing his chin. Suddenly, he darts off. There’s a few soft scraping noises, like drawers opening and closing, and then he returns with a folded piece of parchment.

“If you insist on leaping before thinking, then the least I can do is make sure you get into the least amount of trouble as possible,” he says. He sets the parchment on the table, picks up the file, and waves Kozmotis closer. “Let’s hurry.”

“Why?”

“I figured it would happen sooner or later,” he replies, fiddling with Kozmotis’ manacles until he works the crystals loose. “Besides, the fearlings’ silence _has_ started to get me on edge. As a Guardian, I’m sworn to combat this, and I’m interested in taking an offensive approach for once.”

They slip in through an abandoned cabin in a dense forest, signs of wear and a suspicious history creating a natural weak spot in the veil. It takes almost no effort to force their way through, and then they simply try to find their way through the ever-changing labyrinth.

Kozmotis is quite sure it’s been no more than a few hours. That alone might be suspicious enough, he knows, but hopefully the tracking crystal’s presence on the outside keeps the other Guardians at bay long enough. He and Sanderson trade few words after entering the darkness, both in an attempt to not attract unwanted attention and also to keep up their strength. At some point, Kozmotis’ hand latches on to Sanderson’s shoulder, and he hates moving more than that arm’s length beyond the golden light.

It’s odd not instinctively knowing which paths go anywhere. Well, they all lead somewhere, even if it’s just to the beginning of the same path, but which ones lead to his former chambers are more obscure. Occasionally, he has to let go and let his eyes adjust to the shadows, looking around between layers of darkness that otherwise has them confused. Of course it would: in the light, it seems little more than a straight, hewn hallway with occasional large rooms and no branching paths. In the dark, its true nature is revealed, an all the more elaborate one at that.

Kozmotis returns from scouting ahead, places his hand on Sanderson’s shoulder again, and directs him down the proper path. Eventually—if he’s calculating this correctly, it’s been no more than a day—they finally stumble into his former chambers and share a sigh of relief.

“Not quite exactly as I left it,” Kozmotis says.

At best sarcasm, at worst a deliberate overstatement. There’s three layers of dust across everything, and the bench, pillows and shelves are tossed about and ripped. Several of his trophies lie in scattered pieces on the floor, the last chunk of his old starship embedded at head height in the wall. Kozmotis immediately dives into the piles, separating candles and stuffing and broken planks from each other. After what feels like an hour or so, they’ve turned over every square inch of the trashed room.

“Where is it?” Kozmotis hisses, diving back into a pile or two they’ve already checked.

“We have to move on,” Sanderson says, tugging on his arm. “We’ve already been gone too long.”

“No! I need to make sure we’re not overlooking it!”

He pictures the locket in his mind: the intricate metal cover, the picture inside. He draws upon his stifled strength and summons the silver tether that connects him to her. The single, remaining thread zips out into the corridor, presumably showing the way to the exit closest to her.

“Come on… please…” 

Sweat builds up on his forehead, slipping down until it drips off the tip of his nose. Sanderson makes a noise and returns to tugging at his arm, successfully dragging him a few paces closer to the door.

There’s another tether. As thin as the one shooting off into the darkness, but spiraling closer, into the shadow of a dark corner, a niche within the room his eyes had passed over again and again. The dull silver glow alights on something on the ground. Kozmotis drops the cords and swoops in, reaching into the darkness and closing his hand around a round, metal disc. He drags it into the spare light.

The locket. Turning to Sanderson, he grins, opening it to reveal the picture. Sanderson crowds him. He laughs once, and then returns to yanking at him. This time, Kozmotis relents, closing the locket and tossing the chain around his neck, where it sits just over his heart.

He can’t—and doesn’t want to—shake off the feeling that something long missing has been restored.

They start off in the direction he remembers the war room being. It takes a lot longer to find his way there, partly because the shadows are no longer easing his way through, partly because the nature of this place is starting to affect the both of them, and partly because they have to skirt the larger dungeon and holding areas. Finally, they round a corner and come face to face with the familiar globe.

“Now this is plenty different,” Kozmotis whispers, tracking his eyes over the walls. Sanderson floats around, shining his glow onto the layers of tattered papers and deep scratch marks.

“These papers seem to outline your original plan,” he says. “Back before we imprisoned you.”

“That explains why so many of them are torn and shredded. The shadows are sore losers.”

Kozmotis peers closer at some of the rough carvings. They form a pictorial pattern, drawn hastily in columns. A language. Multiple languages, all scattered among each other. He can pick up a few old Golden Age dialects, as well as some ancient Earth languages. But the snippets don’t reveal any solid plan.

“Have you found anything?” Sanderson asks.

“Not yet. The shadows aren’t much for writing things down most of the time.”

Eventually, they move over to the globe, walking around its now-blank surface until they catch sight of the three expected lights: Burgess, India, Antarctica. All bright as ever. In fact, the one in Burgess is so bright it threatens to blind and burn Kozmotis’ eyes. Sanderson fights his way up to the light and jabs a hand into it for a moment. He yanks it back, rubbing his fingers together and shaking his wrist out.

“Are you all right?”

“Very different from North’s globe.” He peers inside one of the hollow spots. “There’s something in here.”

Kozmotis steps into it as well, and gazes around. Normally, the backside of the globe isn’t lit, but there are reflections of the spire points here. All of them, in fact, including the toppled Uluru and Thera spires. Except, they’re off by a few degrees from where the sites are on the surface, and the fourth light is seemingly near Burgess. 

Kozmotis brushes a finger over one of them, the pair to Antarctica. It flickers at the touch, and then a series of vein-like stripes start branching off from the light. At a certain point, one of the major tributaries flares and takes on a violet-magenta hue. He leans outside of the globe, checking on the surface light. It flickers between regular light and magenta, as well, and when he chances to touch it, it flares brightly, showing a sequence where the light coalesces into one point, and then shoots outward.

He looks at the one mirroring Burgess again. _There’s Fall._

“I think this confirms what my partner wrote to me about,” he says. Sanderson peeks around the side. “They said it’s possible the spires were built to tap into the Sources, and I think these lights inside are the Sources themselves.”

“They’ve found them all?” Sanderson pales a bit, and Kozmotis’ stomach follows the emotion with a flip.

“Apparently. Look.” As they brush their fingers over the Sources of Spring and Summer, similar veins reach out from around them, parts taking on a prominent, yet fading purple. “That corruption is probably being flushed out of the Sources’ seepage into the planet.”

“But why not go straight for the Sources? Just corrupt the whole planet?”

Kozmotis closes his eyes and strains his thoughts. His old plan had been to go straight for corruption, just not an immediate takeover. Getting to the Source would mean hobbling the planet for a long, long time, with less overt effort needing to go towards other stages and projects. But if he had instructed them not to go for the Source itself, but to Source-adjacent uses…

“Sanderson.” The Sandman floats over to him. “How diluted must belief be before it becomes another type of magic altogether?”

“Not sure. I’m not really a magician or scientist.”

“But obviously it can be collected? It’s tangible enough to do that?”

“It must be, or else what are we Guardians doing chasing it all day and night?”

“Then, I think the spires are powered by the Sources in a way that creates a collection beacon for belief.” The speculation he and his partner wrote each other about start falling into place. “That’s why the spires read as belief itself rather than any other kind of magic. We thought they might be obscuring some other use, but what if it is simply a high concentration of belief itself?”

“Why—”

“I think that question is irrelevant compared to the issue that this is why they’ve been quiet.”

Sanderson cocks his head for a moment, then widens his eyes, deflating. “We’ve been playing into their hands this whole time by continuing to spread belief.”

They take one glance at each other and immediately start for the doorway.

Sanderson clutches to Kozmotis this time, as he scans every crooked corridor and offshoot path to get them to the nearest exit as soon as possible. He’s lost track of exactly how long they’ve been down here, but it can’t be more than a few days on the outside, can it?

He skims past yet another opening in the maze, and then he skids to a stop. Sanderson almost flies past him, but makes his way back around. He grunts and tugs his collar, but Kozmotis waves him away, pointing into the doorway.

What had caught his eye was a violet-magenta glow. He doesn’t remember any room in his lair having any sort of lighting like that, and especially not with that now-familiar violet glow. He steps through the opening and takes in the relatively short, but still towering crystals, pulsing with that light. Sanderson joins him, looking around and letting out a shuddering breath.

They’re growing more spires, and likely have been for awhile. There’s too many just for mere backups of Thera’s and Uluru’s spires. His thoughts flick over to the spire in India—not near a Source, but a threat nonetheless. And near enough to the Tooth Palace... to siphon off what seeps into the planet as she accumulates belief in one spot.

Kozmotis relays his thoughts to Sanderson, who says, "That's why they've been more active around Ganderly. And I'll bet they're planning something similar for the Pole and my island."

"Perhaps even the moon," Kozmotis replies, heart stopping as soon as he says it.

They glance at each other again and start heading out. Before they can get halfway across the room, a whisper starts up, and several deep carvings, previously invisible in the walls, glow a terrible red. Kozmotis focuses on the words, but the wave of fear and malice that sweeps in chokes him so thoroughly that his hearing muffles, and it’s only when Sanderson yanks him by the shoulders into his own diminishing sphere of light that he can hear properly again.

He recognizes these words.

He’s said them before himself, hundreds of years ago. One day in the Himalayan mountains, trudging behind North and Ms. Goose’s adoptive father, disguised within that robot North had created, having spent weeks secretly studying the magical tomes her father had kept in his home.

The dark world rushes up in scale around them, as Kozmotis is too late to counter the spell of enslavement paralyzing him and Sanderson in the middle of the shadows’ lair.


	79. Descent Pt 2

At some begging, Katherine agrees to stay with Jordan. She hadn’t wanted to go into the lair regardless, but knowing your son is safe helps you leave the peace of his home and head back into your forest.

The clearing is untouched. The janky treehouse is still sitting up in the branches, and the area around it is as naturally overgrown as ever. But there’s no spire, no piles of fearlings, no feeling that the life is or has been sucked out of the land. After sending Kidra out to investigate real quick, you, Jack, and Nightlight head into the open.

“I’m gonna check inside for a second,” you say, ignoring Jack’s protests. Scrambling up the ladder, you nearly stumble over some twisted bits of wood.

“Sorry,” Jack says, floating up. Nightlight skirts up behind him, darting his head around and around. “We, uh… we may have really gone overboard when we tried to take you in last year. And maybe scratched a few things when we moved the lab.”

The fact that you haven’t been back here in almost a year kicks you right in the teeth, but there’s no time to recover and think about it. Your home looks fine, for the most part, and that’s all you wanted to know.

Now it’s time to look for the doorway.

You’d never really paid attention to what might have been the portal Koz used to get to and from your place—there are too many scattered, dead trees to take detailed notes on. Besides, by the time it would have crossed your mind, you were too emotionally conflicted to search, and soon after, were running away from the Guardians’ ambush at your home. And then another eight months flew by.

But you find it: the gnarled, creepy tree looms barely a hundred yards away from the clearing. Nightlight confirms it’s the thin part of the veil, and active even after so many months. You blush as you realize this is the same tree he pinned you against that one close call at dawn before last Halloween. You shake off the memory as Nightlight dives down into the lair, Jack grabbing your elbow and tugging you down as well.

If not for the insistent glow of Nightlight, you would be incapacitated as soon as you descend fully into the shadows. Your previous time down here comes rushing back, and you cling to Jack and Kidra. He hisses and coughs, prying your hand loose from where you’re yanking his hoodie around his neck.

Nightlight starts to zip away, but Jack says, “Stick together! We need your light to get through this.”

Nightlight flips back around, sheathing two daggers from his hands and making a small noise of dissent. But he hovers nearby nonetheless, allowing you and Jack some reprieve from the suffocating darkness.

“Any memories on how to get through the halls?” Jack asks.

“Not really. I was totally exhausted by the time y’all rescued us, and I couldn’t see anything…” You pause in walking and touch your lens. Jack looks back and sighs.

“I mean… that’s a quick way to see through the shadows, right?”

You nod. “But I think they might be able to see right back through me, too.”

Nightlight swoops around the two of you and darts a few yards ahead, insistently looking back and gesturing. You groan.

“If I absolutely have to, I’ll do it.”

“Cool.”

The trek is long from the get-go. You’re in a never-ending hallway, marked with occasional wide, square rooms. Your stomach flips a little when memories of your last journey through here slide up to the surface of your mind. The inconsistencies in the architecture, the twisting and confusion. It makes perfect sense for this place to be so arduous, but you’re so grateful for the light this time.

After what feels like half an hour— _feels_ like, you remind yourself—the three of you are no closer to finding any branching paths.

“Terrible labyrinth if you ask me,” Jack whispers.

What few words you’ve said among yourselves have all been whispers. You don’t want to say it out loud, but you’re pretty sure the shadows know you’re there. That physical manifestation of the itch resounds just off to the side, lightly scraping against the rock-like walls so faintly you second-guess if you’ve actually heard something. But the answering tingle over your back confirms the worst.

After another half-hour, Nightlight stops, glaring at you two. You haven’t been around this Guardian long enough to get a feel for him, but his silence is simultaneously unnerving and comfortable, as is his intense stare. You know he and Katherine are involved, and that he did a lot of heroics back in the day, but that’s where your knowledge ends. So him rushing up to you, invading your bubble, and watching you intently is rather off-putting. Beside you, Kidra lets out a low growl and moves their foreclaw between you and him. You’re not sure if he’ll attack you or actually say something.

He reaches out and taps the lens. You jerk back, squinting your eye shut instinctively.

“I guess it might be about time,” Jack says, hunching over his staff. “Are you good for it?”

You back up. Nightlight follows the motion. You turn your shoulder to him instead, facing Jack. “Yeah, I guess. We’re not getting anywhere at the moment.”

“Do you have some of that salve?”

You produce it from your quiver, and slather some on. Once it’s all set, you take a deep breath, and drag the lens down until it hangs around your neck like a necklace.

The pain is immediate, not just from the usual disorientation, but from how _bright_ Nightlight is. You yell out and slam your hand over your eye, turning to get the worst of it out of your face. But it’s so overwhelming that the beams sneak past your fingers and make your eye water.

“Ease up, man,” Jack says behind you. The light dims a fraction. “Little more.”

The light dies into a pitiful glow, barely allowing you to see your own hands in front of you with your normal eye. But it’s enough for you to remove your hand, use your other eye, and glance around. In front of you, about two yards ahead where the light stops, you see the twisting maze. The hallway you’re in is full ups, downs, and branching paths, so many that your head spins at all the options. Behind you, Nightlight and Jack wait. You nod, and Jack holds his staff out. As soon as you grab on to the crook, you start moving the train forward.

Quick glances into every opening doesn’t really give you a sense of where you’re supposed to go, so you take another breath in and try to tap into the same mind meld from earlier. It’s a risk, but if the shadows are already aware of your presence, then might as well deal with the lack of surprise.

Allowing the itch in is gross. The following whispers are grosser, like someone whispering too close to a microphone, light smacks and pops and swallows sending disgusted shivers throughout you and teetering you to the edge of throwing up. No, no time for such a thing. Have to watch—You have to watch and listen out for all the knowledge. Floor plan of lair, home of shadows, the fearlings are restless.

The next opening you pass, you glance down. Nightmare holding areas. You skim to the next one. Loop; not useful. The next. Exits to various continents.

On and on, opening upon opening, but none leading to where you think Koz and Sandy might be. It feels like it’s been hours at this point. Hours? Yes, the whispers confirm to your relief. Mere hours. What you’re doing isn’t enough to really seek through the shadows. Must dive in, must really explore and know.

You pause a moment, and before Jack can ask anything you close your eyes and concentrate like you did on the roof, summoning the bit of spire and reaching out to Kidra, and trying to tap into that odd, harmonious song. It’s small and quiet, until it isn’t. The rush of noise this time is more like shouting, and you’re not sure if it’s because of the proximity to shadows or because you know what you’re looking for.

Three turns down. Hanging room. Cages. Tiny cage for tiny captives. Holding until ready for processing, until ready for victory. The other is here too! Come see, we’ll all see, watch through us or in person, you—us.

“Kozmotis?”

The small voice rips you from your concentration. You pant, trying to keep hold of the directions you got.

“All right?” Jack asks.

“Yeah.” You skim ahead. “This way.”

“I hope you doing that isn’t gonna be trouble.”

“Oh, it is… But it’ll be worth it.”

A few turns later, you lead them into a wide, cavernous room. Dozens, if not hundreds of iron cages hang like coffins from the ceiling, the chains binding them to the roof clinking and jingling and echoing over the chasm.

“Oh, this place…” Jack shivers. “I remember this.”

“From fifty years ago?”

“Yeah.”

He flares up his staff and takes off across the void. You lose sight of him except for the glow, dragging your lens back over your eye and scooting closer to the ring of Nightlight’s glow. He increases the amount of light he’s putting out, and you sigh in relief as the uncanny shadows back off.

“This way,” you tell him, heading down the walkway.

Even with the lens back on, you can’t shake the creeping feeling surrounding you, can’t ignore the growing whispers or the tingling sensation freewheeling over your shoulders and back again. You’re going to have to check the mark once you get back; you’re going to have to face the consequences of this.

The electric blue flares up in the distance, and you hear a faint call. At the same time, the signal stone at your side grows warm. Nightlight starts to fly out over the abyss as well, pausing only when you don’t immediately follow. He waves you to come on.

“I can’t fly,” you say.

He holds up a hand and makes a small globule of light dance around his fingertips, nodding to you. You shake your head.

“It's not that easy for me.”

He floats out a little more, beckoning again. You shift where you stand, not happy to be out of the light. Looking over the edge, you consider what happened last time. You tapped into the shadows, made them solid, found that little catch that let you in and mold. Your magic flicks to your fingertips, and you hold your hand out.

 _But it can't be that easy!_ Your mind screams. _You’ve experimented for seventy-five years! If it were that easy, then—_

_Belief is the demon._

You snap your head around at the thought, but only Nightlight is there, glancing at the pulsing light of Jack’s staff in the distance. He floats a little farther.

Right. Fine, then.

You swipe your fingers through the air, searching for a catch. It has to be there, has to exist—The magic latches on. Now, you can’t quite remember what you were thinking last year, but it was more about what you needed and didn’t have than about the next moves you were going to make. So, as your fingers sink in, as the shadows pull toward you, you think about how to get across.

 _I need a walkway, like last time._ The catch splits wider around your hands, the shadows going wild and trying to feed into the crackles.

“No!” you say. A burst of concentration later, and it stops trying to overtake, despite you being in darkness. Nightlight has flown ahead, and you can see the sphere of light in the distance, illuminating a smaller cage and Jack. He summons more magic, aiming for the cage itself. It releases and shoots into the cage with a loud, echoing _clang._

As you watch, the shadow molding almost slips from your control, but before it can free itself, you dive back in, snapping it into place. And then you rip it. A seam opens across the void in front of you, shimmering iridescent, and then solidifying under your fingertips with one more jab into the whole thing.

Jack and Nightlight take notice of it, and then poke at it. It’s seemingly solid enough, but this is the real test isn’t it? You place one foot on the thin, ribbon-like walkway and lean. It holds.

_On the count of three. One… Two… Three!_

You swing your other foot around until it lands in front of your other. You wobble for a second, throwing your arms out for balance, and Kidra’s jaws gently come down around your arm, releasing you only when you’re stable. Another step. Less wobble. Yet another, followed by a quicker step forward. You laugh, mind just this side of exhausted hysteria. Here it is. Here it really is. You pick up your pace, bouncing across the walkway.

You’re about halfway over, when a resounding, moaning roar kicks up from behind you.

“Oh, no,” you hear Jack say, and he starts whacking the cage with his staff, the banging echoing off everything and replicating itself as it passes over the other cages. Nightlight whips out a dagger and stabs it into one of the seams of the cage door, pulling to leverage it a bit.

The shadows roar again, closer. When you turn just enough to check over your shoulder, the darkest, inkiest patch of shadow blots out from a spot on the wall, presumably another opening you can’t see behind your lens. Hollow, empty eyes open all across the shadows, owned by multitudes of fearlings and nightmares pouring into and choking the small space.

“Fuck!” You bounce your way the rest of the distance to the cage, catching onto the side of it and turning yourself to face the darkness. You drag your bow out, string it, and load an arrow into it, aiming between the closest pair of eyes. “Almost got it?”

“Workin’ on it right now!” Jack yells back.

There’s a burst of blue light behind you, and a subsequent wave of cold. An ice shard grazes your elbow, making you flinch and release the arrow. It goes wide of where you were aiming, but still manages to hit the increasingly large and close wave of shadow. It explodes gold-tinged-blue, and a sizzling sound emits from the point hit. A tinny, individual echo of a squeal screams at you before being swallowed up by the encroaching mass.

Nightlight flashes past you, flaring up so bright you can barely stand to look his direction anymore. Kidra darts after him, not waiting for your signal. They plow through the nearest wave, bellowing and slicing. You turn, stumbling over to Jack where he’s icing up the lock on the cage again. He lifts his staff above his head, but you grab his arm, summoning another arrow. He shrugs and moves slightly out of your way. You aim your best, and plunge the arrow directly into the lock. A shimmer of gold explodes over you, and though you reach out to grab hold of the cage as you wobble, the force swings it out of your grasp.

You fall, hearing Jack scream your name over the creaking metal and your own shrieks.

The shadows are on you the instant you’re going down, a tornado of fearlings rushing and jabbering and laughing and scratching at you. You flail, trying to grab hold of anything that isn’t shadow or fearling or nightmare. But it sucks you in regardless.

The claws are all over you, ripping at your skin, especially over the mark down your back. More shadows squirm underneath your skin, and you can’t do anything except gasp and turn and try to right yourself in the choking whirl.

 _I have to… I have to… I have to…_ You can’t concretely think what you must do, only create spasming flashes of pictures across your eyes. _Something!_

But the plea goes unanswered as the shadows close in, weaving through your hair and tightening their grip.


	80. Extraction

It somehow gets more humiliating as each second ticks forward. He can’t move. Can’t look around the space he’s in. Can’t speak unless spoken to. Must verbally acknowledge his captors’ superiority over him with the most degrading, simpering, “Yes, Master. No, Master,” which hits so nauseatingly far from when his partner has chained him up. And what’s worse is that the Nightmare Man had lost interest in him almost immediately as it realized he had only the vaguest of clues of what its plans are.

_Just add this experience to the list of things I must apologize for,_ he thinks to himself, as it’s the only pastime granted him right now.

He’s pretty sure they’ve hung him and Sanderson in one of the dungeon cages. There’s nothing but echoes all around them, faint clinking of chain among the cackles of the fearlings. It’s also extremely dark, too dark for even Kozmotis’ eyes to pierce through all the way. If not for a remnant of golden glow that not even the spell of enslavement can quash (a feature that thankfully burned a few of the fearlings trying to mes with their stiff forms) he wouldn’t be so sure they’d kept them together. And he’s not so sure that they won’t eventually toss them both to the fearlings or nightmares as chew toys. If he could shudder, he would have; it’s one thing being able to scramble and fight back against feral nightmares, but to be a defenseless thing in the middle of that? He’d rather die bored and stiff right here.

Oddly? Thankfully? The locket also shrank with him and plastered itself to his form. It’s as much a part of him at the moment as his limbs and eyes, and he tries to while away the endless drip of time trying, somehow, to will his daughters name from his mind through a miracle of proximity.

He trawls through the recently unearthed memories, especially the one of the parade. It’s been the most persistent one he cannot crack, though he thinks if they were at the Palace and made to try again, he would probably get as far as his wife’s name.

The desire to try and dredge up more memories vanishes as he hears the shadows stirring again. They’re moving through the room, skittering into crevices and just behind innocent objects. His heart lurches and sinks as soon as he hears the murmurings of Jack and his partner. They came. They’re here!

He prays they know they’re walking into an ambush of some sort.

Kozmotis wills himself to turn and see Sanderson, but nothing happens. He waits, impatient and trapped, as demonic visions spin through the distance. Finally, Jack peeks through the bars of the cage. He turns and flares his staff, backing up for a moment.

_He’s… Is he going to… Oh no._

The ice thunks against the cage, sending a spray of cold through the bars, shards of it cutting very close to his head. Images of the shattered North doll from hundreds of years ago invade his peace of mind; he’s not quite sure Ms. Goose would be willing to chant him back together as she had North.

Another familiar light blasts through the darkness. Nightlight stabs the door of the cage after Jack blasts it again, and he hears grunts of exertion as the cage rattles and sways. He slides as the cage arcs up a little much, crashing into Sanderson on the way.

_Come on!_ He wants to yell. Tries to yell. Still nothing.

The fearlings become restless, and the shadows grow louder and closer. Where is his partner? He heard them, but hasn’t seen them or heard them approach the cage. That is, until Kidra’s yelp and bellow grows close. At that, Nightlight’s glow retreats, and his partner replaces his presence. Another wave of cold, but this time, his partner says something, and in the next second, an explosion tinged with iridescence rocks the cage wildly. His paralyzed form slides around, finally able to see out of the cage and its newly-destroyed door.

He’s able to see just in time for his partner to disappear as his wife did: falling with a scream.

His mouth does not work; he cannot scream in reply. Only try to impotently fight against the imprisonment, try to move anything. A finger, even, just one finger to prove he still has some mastery over his own consciousness and body.

“Kozmotis?”

There’s a weight against his chest, pressing as if trying to choke him. It can’t be. But anything’s possible, isn’t it?

“Kozmotis!”

Rina’s voice reverberates around him, traveling from all distances far away and converging onto himself. He knows her physical form must still be on the Island, but her mind… it’s been half-linked to the shadows this whole time. He reaches out to her, straining to _move!_

A silver glow snakes its way through the gaping hole in the cage. It whirls off far away, disappearing into the darkness. It ties itself neatly around his pinky finger, complete with a tidy bow.

His finger twitches.

*************

The shadows crawl over your arms, dragging themselves over you and increasing the whirling panic in your mind. Until it stops. It all stops as you once again ease back into that harmony of pulses and itch. Even when you double check to make sure the lens is still there, the state persists.

You don’t think you need to check the mirror when you get out of this. If you get out of this.

“Kozmotis…”

Forlorn cry so far away, so distant. But near enough in mind. Near enough in kind. Sweet child, suffering from not fully turning. Mind across two thresholds. Being pulled, reluctantly ever deeper into home, would be further if actually in home.

Foolish once-girl still believes.

Rina still believes. She still calls out to Kozmotis for help, even though she’s become this.

_Alisah._ Her face blinks into existence. Then her friends she introduced to you at Jordan’s party. Jordan himself. The handful of little lights on a globe, your last tethers to the sanity and knowledge of yourself.

One of Kidra’s claws arcs through the shadows surrounding you, making the soothing harmony scratch and slip. In that instance, you come back to yourself, and only to yourself. You summon all your strength and flare up your fingertips, suddenly able to see them against the overwhelming darkness.

Kidra rips through the gestalt again, and what you can now identify as exhaustion lightens from yourself a bit. The shadows lurch towards the power, but you yank back on it just enough to keep it tantalizingly out of reach, just like at the new moon. And you let it spread.

Up your arms, over your shoulders. Mostly to feel some sort of safety, cocooned in your power. But as soon as it passes over the mark, you feel the faintest tug under your skin. Then another. And yet more and more as the wriggling, itching sensation riles up and blooms to the surface of your skin. You swear the skin itself bubbles and bulges as the shadows beneath squeal and shriek, the sound shooting out of your pores like a tea kettle whistle.

Shadowy threads float out of your skin like malevolent deep-sea grasses. When you try to brush them off, you only succeed in yanking at them, and the half-pull makes your stomach lurch. It’ll take a much stronger force to finally get them out of you. At this sign of weakness, the shadows close in yet again, scratching and ripping, dragging over your whole body until they scrape the lens from your face and hurl it into the abyss.

Silently apologizing to North, you don’t bother closing your regular eye to favor the dark one. The nausea is already there, the mark is already spreading too far. With that in mind, you take in a better understanding of where everything is around you. The tumbling shadows, their perimeters, their sounds.

_It’ll take a miracle to get out of this._

The newly discordant harmony gives way to a battle beyond, flashes of white and blue light moving back and forth between the black sand grains. And then gold. And then silver.

They’re out, they’re free, they’re fighting. There’s still the absurdly smallest bit of hope yet.

_So it’s time to generate that miracle._

It takes all of your concentration to keep the external shadows at bay while also courting the internal ones. They’re more stubborn, given that they’ve had all this time to settle deep into you. Now that you’re even listening, you can hear the shadows run and squeal and cry in a reflection of your own voice as you drag them out. 

Fighting against the exhaustion, against the nausea, against the hopelessness they’re streaming through your ears, you focus only on Jordan. Because it’s about to get even worse.

You feed your own magic again, and the whiskers tickle as they pull towards it, but remain rooted to whatever pores they came out of. The iridescence pools all over yourself, and you track where it weaves between the shadows curling through it like content cats.

_There’s something around here._ You scrape all around, searching. And then somewhere over your shoulder, something catches. There’s another catch around your knee. Third, fourth, fifth catches. The world silences. You try to drag against it, but it’s not enough. It’s a battle of attrition: either the shadows will give out first, or you will.

Unless…

So as not to disturb the covering of iridescence and shadows, you carefully move your hand over your quiver and summon a monstrosity. The three-headed hydra of Spring, Summer, and Winter streams, whirling around each other in the jar, casts vibrant glows on every shadow. But when they try to hiss and recoil, your magic keeps them there, wrapping them tightly as you bring the jar up to your face.

_Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea!_ your thoughts chant over and over. You agree, but shake them off anyway. Anything in large enough quantities is lethal; but contained dosages are different. In your mind, you salute a toast to whoever cares to watch.

You pop open the top, count to ten, and close it again. The barest hints of each stream leak into the small space, and the shadows push and pull, unable to determine if they want more or need to run. You send more of your magic out to mix with the Sources, drawing the crackles closer until you pull it all the way inside.

As soon as your thoughts start racing—determination, resolve, and curiosity fighting for dominance within—you reach out and dig in to those catches.

*************

At first, it’s just the pinky. That makes sense, if that promise he made her is allowing this to happen. His voice returns next, a tinny shadow of itself.

“Ms. Rina?” he calls as much as he can or dares.

The tether brightens for a moment. He flexes all his fingers, and then starts dragging himself, millimeter by millimeter, over to where Sanderson’s inert form lies. Thankfully, the rest of his arm loosens up as he goes, making the journey much shorter and easier.

“Sanderson?” he rasps. The other doesn’t move. “Right, right. Could you hurry? I know you must have something up your sleeve.”

A clattering erupts just outside the cage. His neck can move just enough to turn his head and see Nightlight and Kidra slicing through the wall of darkness just outside. A sliver gets past them and passes back over the cage. The tether flickers and goes out for three seconds, a time during which Kozmotis once again loses control over his own body. And as soon as it returns, he becomes unstiff all over again. Thankfully, Nightlight seems to have, if not made friends with Kidra, then has come to an agreement with them, as he hangs off their belly upside-down, letting them take the shadows above as he takes the ones below.

As soon as he can move his arm again, Kozmotis summons a tether between him and Sanderson.

“I don’t know if this will work,” he says, “but we need to get out of here.”

Sanderson gives a half-blink, and one corner of his mouth curls into a slight smile. As the minutes wear on, both threads get brighter and brighter, and Sanderson starts to creak his fingers free of the paralysis.

“A little more,” Kozmotis says. “Come on!”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” he growls back. Then he looks surprised, and sheepish. “Sorry.”

“No need.” Kozmotis rolls his shoulders out. The cage walls are shrinking the longer this goes on; no, they’re growing again. “Can you summon your magic?”

Sanderson weakly raises a hand and squints his eyes. He manages a puff of gold. And then a small cloud. And then a snaking swirl that banishes all of the shadows in a foot radius around him.

He sits up, stretching, completely broken free of the spell. Kozmotis lingers behind, still a little stiff, and only having grown as large as Sanderson’s full size. The Sandman looks over and gives a small laugh, covering his mouth. He takes a deep breath and allows his glow to consume the entirety of the cage, blinding Kozmotis. In the split-second he can’t see anything, he does hear the shadows let out a collective, growling gasp.

His vision returns, and Sanderson’s dangling his full-sized form out of the tiny cage, a small, weak cloud of dreamsand forming next to them. Rina’s tether is still there, flickering. He glances around, wondering if she can see him, wondering if he can somehow yank her mind free with the connection he has a hold of.

He feeds into the connection and tugs. It’s like an illusionist’s stream of scarves follows him, the connection clearly having an end point, but an endless middle, able to cover any and all distance between them. Fine, then. Kozmotis sends a thank you to the other end and drops the thread.

Just in time, as Sanderson yanks on his collar and starts flying them out of reach of the nearest shadows homing in on their position.

Kozmotis scrambles until he’s kneeling on the tiny cloud, keeping a tight grip on Sanderson’s shoulder for balance. He raises his other hand and summons more silver, the threads pushing a straight line through the shadows until it hits the main wave. Sweat beads at both their hairlines as they struggle to maintain their powers amid everything.

They pull parallel to where Jack, Nightlight, and Kidra are already converging, and Kozmotis whips his handful of threads back at the same time Sanderson does the same on one of his whips. One sideways glance, and they direct both glows to wind around each other and swing around. The gold and silver cuts a swath through the wave of shadows, banishing hundreds, if not thousands of fearlings and nightmares at once. The result isn’t nearly as effective as when his partner had combined his and Jack’s powers, but it certainly makes for a beautiful, metallic sight that shows off the room as exists in the light: drab, square, and small.

There’s a sucking sound, and half of the blot of shadows recedes back through a near-invisible opening. With the meager glow surrounding them all, Kozmotis can see the relief on everyone’s face.

Except for his partner.

They had fallen.

With a sinking realization, he starts scouring the area, and then summons the connection they share. Directly below, about where the floor should be in the light, the tether cuts off suddenly as it pierces a remaining piece of the blot. The shadows part a bit, allowing the least bit of multicolored lights peek through, lights that radiate an odd mix of nostalgia, hope, and fun.

A terrible, sublime sensation travels up the cord to him just as the lights suck back inward.

“No!” he screams, trying to communicate his thoughts through the tether as though it’s a phone. He receives no reply, and screams their name.

There’s an odd pulling sensation at his chest, and his vision blanks.

*************

The Sources immediately spread throughout your body. At first, you can only feel the dissonant hot and cold and mild sensations pumping through you like blood during a run. Then the tips of your fingers light up, colors running in forking paths just under your skin. That’s when it starts burning. Not exactly burning, per se, not like Summer has taken the most hold of your body, just pain so blindingly strong that the only word for it is “burn.”

You open your moth to scream, and hear it two seconds later.

The Sources mingle with your power for a bit, and the crackle that kicks up around you sparks with green, red, and blue. It’s so overwhelming that you almost don’t notice the thread blooming at your chest.

It’s time.

Digging into the catches and concentrating, you use your new energy to push outward, concentrating the sensations out of your pores. Beside you, one of the whisker-like strings lights up, the same burning sensation coursing through it. Another whisker lights up around your ankles, and several more flare all around you.

Annoying, disgusting, terrifying.

You reach over and grab the one on your shoulder. It holds fast against the yanking, and the point on your skin where it connects screams in pain. But you persist until you the first give, until the shadowy string slides out more and more, until the final pop when you can hold the whole thing in your hand. It looks like a limp porcupine quill, slowly dissipating back into the shadows.

The next one gives more easily, with less pain, and by the time you’re at the final one that you can see for now, it takes little more than a touch to rid yourself of it. What might be the last remnant of sober thought within you sighs in relief, and then it refocuses on the next task.

The catch points shudder and give, and you take the opportunity to start molding. You’re not sure what you’re creating just yet; shadows are wholly mysteries, loath to give up their secrets until you force them into submission. The Sources of magic winding through guide your thinking, however, and you start to form visions of them, feel the need to be near one.

You crack through the veil somewhere. It’s cold. Desolate. Not quite barren—there is life—but it’s not bustling with many overlapping ecosystems. For all it’s harshness, it’s safe, and deep down, your heart feeds on the nostalgia churning within you and what small bit of it comes through the rift.

There’s a flash of silver, and suddenly Kozmotis crashes into you, knocking the wind out of your lungs. The interruption jolts part of your mind back to sobriety, and you catch his shoulders, keeping the rift open.

“Koz?” Your voice sounds like distant reverb heard underwater. He seems to hear it, though, and wraps his arms around you.

“I’ve got you.”

He pulls back a little, glancing up. A cord curls the direction he looks, and with one, small inhale-exhale, the silver flares again, and you’re being pulled. A blink later, and two bright lights cutting through the darkness close in.

Nightlight. Sandy. Jack. Kidra. All accounted for. The first three are watching Kozmotis, who checks himself over before shrugging. Your mind starts to slide back into the desire to be near its own kind again, and you try to push out of his grasp.

“Darling, what are you—”

“There’s a way out.” You point back the way you came. The crackling iridescence leads to the rift in a trail. “To Winter.”

If they react, you can’t tell, don’t bother looking. You grab on to Kidra and direct them back down, through the rift in the veil. You only know they join you as you all find yourselves overlooking a blue cavern carved out of the ice and rocks, a feeling of safety and resolution radiating up as much as possible from the twisting and turning cold.

Just outside the cavern, in the distance under the quickly darkening sky, the spire juts up from the horizon.


	81. Dark is to Cold As Friend is to Fun

His partner acting strangely calm throughout all this stress can only be explained through the Sources pulsing through them at the moment. Every so often, he sees another color fade into their fingertips, cheeks, and the ends of their hair. It also pulses into the mark on their shoulder. He blinks. There’s something different about the mark now that he has a sliver of daylight to see it in.

First of all, it’s shrunken back to its original size, just a small patch of discolored skin on their neck, shoulder, and a bit creeping up to their eye. Secondly, it’s faded, not unlike his own mark. Anyone can tell something’s happened, but it’s less of an aggressive patch and more like a calmly fading scar.

His partner slowly turns to face them all, and his questions about the mark disappear as their gaze bores through him, directed more by the Sources. Nightlight, Sanderson, and especially Jack take a moment to breathe, shaking themselves out and laughing in victory. No time later, Jack shoots into the air.

“Well, since we’re here…” He points his thumb towards the spire and grins at Kozmotis. “Feel like tying up a loose end?”

“Always,” Kozmotis replies, running his fingers over his partner’s neck.

They shiver under his touch, not seemingly bothered by the subzero temperatures at the moment. He whistles for Kidra, and they trudge over, kneeling to let he and his partner on their back. He wraps his arms around them to keep them upright, especially since he has no idea how long their high will last. Hopefully long enough to take down the spire.

They lace their fingers through his at their waist and turn their head slightly. He suddenly notices that their lens is gone, but he shoves that panic away as soon as they say, “Let’s not delay. It’s getting dark.”

Indeed, the moon is barely visible on the horizon. His partner whistles, and that’s the split-second notice he has before Kidra takes off.

It’s well and fully dark by the time they get within a thousand feet of the spire, and the fearlings are on full alert. They’ve spread so thin at the circumference that individual shadows pop in and out of the shuddering mass, some of them brave enough to yank nightmares into temporary submission and gallop round and round. Jack scouts ahead, unhappy to inform that the Nightmare Man is at the center of the morass shouting what sounds to him like garbled instructions. Worse, the spire is active, violet energy building from the base.

“And that’s that,” he finishes, turning to Kozmotis and Sandy. “So what’s the plan?”

“If we’re intent of crushing this thing once and for all tonight…” Kozmotis looks at everyone. Nightlight, Sanderson, Jack, and his partner all nod in affirmation. “Then we need to get in and out as fast as possible.”

“Get me close enough,” the echoing voice of his partner says, “and let me combine all of your powers.”

“What’ll that do?” Jack asks, eyes glittering as he hovers in anticipation.

They shrug. “I don’t know yet. But my current state won’t last long, and if Tooth is anything to go by, there’s a chance I’ll be unconscious for a bit after this.”

Kozmotis hugs them tighter for a moment. But he nods. “So, we need to cut through them. Sanderson, Nightlight—” The two perk up and listen, faint smiles on both their faces. “Your lights can easily carve a path for us. We’ll need you two to go in first and beat back the worst of the shadows.”

 _If only the moon was waxing,_ he thinks, sending a small thought out to Selene. After a moment, his partner giggles.

“Oh, is that what we sound like to her?” they whisper. “That’s pitiful. And hilarious.” They look back at him. “Don’t worry, she heard, too. She’s more interested in watching things play out, but she’s not above interfering for her favorites, if things go too far south.”

They take that moment to crush their lips to his, shoving his head down to meet theirs. It feels so familiar and safe, and for a second, he can imagine he’s not in the desolate Antarctic, about to risk life and limb yet again to undo his former life’s ambitions. For a second, he’s back in their forest. At Sanderson’s awkward cough, he pries himself from them and looks around.

“Nightlight and I will cut through first,” he says. “You two follow, and Jack, you guard the rear. We’ll fight our way to the spire and aim for only the one thing: destruction.”

Jack salutes and twirls his staff. Nightlight summons several daggers to his hands. Sanderson draws a reserve of dreamsand to his fingertips. Kozmotis and his partner summon their own magics and hunker down on Kidra’s back.

“Off we go, then.”

*************

Two layers of vision settle over you. The outer layer is ruled by the extra magics swirling within you. The inner layer is your regular mind, trying to play catch-up, as usual. You can barely feel pain and definitely can’t feel the brunt of the cold of the South Pole, except for every thirty-three point four-two seconds when your inner mind realizes how cold it is. It’s like being drunk: as your eyes take in the world around you, your attentive mind analyzes it a few seconds after the fact.

“Drunk” was a freeing state back when you were alive. Thankfully, never to the point of being a problem, but it might’ve gotten close after awhile. Under the influence of the Sources, however, you watch the world move in slower motion, in contrast to your over-hyperactive mind. You hope you can recall every thought you’ve had after inhaling so much this stuff, because you could apply it to so much of your research. In the meantime, between now and your inevitable crash, however, you revel in your innate understanding of magic.

Beyond the Maxwell’s Demon analogy. Beyond pure belief. Beyond anything you could have ever imagined as a mere human.

Aren’t those mortals and their tenuous understanding of the nature of the universe adorable?

 _I’m one of them, though,_ your inner mind says, only to be chastised like a child by the outer mind: _You_ used _to be one of them._

Sandy and Nightlight swoop through the outer rim of shadows, flaring their lights as much as they can. The fearlings react instantly, trying to break as close to them as possible. Their natures clash, however, and despite a few close calls, the lights cut through the darkness—both the shadows proper and the natural motions of the planet.

You feel Kidra’s muscles strain under you as they rush behind, their command whistles just behind your lips if you need them to change course in an instant.

A contingent of darkness lashes out. Several contingents, if the many tendrils of shadows on either side of you are any clue. You don’t (can’t) worry about that at the moment. A simple flick of your fingers over Kozmotis’ magic renders the threads too powerful for the extremities of the shadows’ magic. They crumble where they stand, and the spire looms closer and closer. Now that you see it under the influence, it’s completely unnatural and it pokes against your eyes. It’s the barely combined results of two separate magics—Koz’s old shadows and Jack’s. They never really seem to have melded, either because you’re the only one who can do that, or because it hasn’t been long enough for them to naturally seep together. It’s nothing but a rising column of angry fun and desperate fear, aspects of these two magics that clash yet naturally agree at the end of the day.

No wonder the shadows took to it so easily. Used it, changed it, remolded it to suit their nefarious purposes. It’s free real estate, if you’re looking for negative emotions to build a foundation upon.

You summon your magic and wait for everyone to get into the right position. You’re nearing the spire itself, but parts of the darkness have split Sandy and Nightlight apart. They rise into the air, swirling around the different tendrils of darkness jabbing at them. The roots of their magics are alien, but so similar in a way you can see now, but can only pray to remember later.

_Belief… What a concept._

Maybe your inner brain should keep up with what’s happening.

Koz keeps shoving and yanking you side to side, and as you come back to yourself a bit, it’s because the shadows are lashing out. He’s muttering behind you each time in apology. You blink a few times, and the next time a tendril takes a swipe, your hand is there to meet it, sinking in and sending crackles all around it.

The section breaks off from the main body of the shadows, making it even more malleable. It tries to self-feed from your magic, but another jolt shuts it down easily. And you mold it. Into what, you’re not quite sure at first, but as the intense heat-cold-growth makes another pass through you, from your head to your fingertips, you start flattening and solidifying the shadows into something javelin-like. 

You’re now within one hundred yards of the spire, the shadows around you dissipating from the amplified results of dreamsand, silver bonds, and fun. You reach out to amplify Nightlight’s magic, but he neither seems to need nor want your help. The glow around him and the potency of his daggers are enough for him to plow through the shadows regardless.

Still curious, you reach out again when he gets close, and you hand him the javelin, magic still whirling around it. He hesitates for a moment before grabbing it, a bit of his own magic pulling into the crackles and shadows. He cries out and feeds more of his light into it, nearly overwhelming the whole thing. But as the light dials back, what’s left is a glittering, crystalline short sword. A light pulses within it, and a few multicolored lights of the Sources.

Nightlight looks it over for a second, raising an eyebrow at you before jetting off to cut another swath out of the shadows. Too fast for you to really gauge his reaction or try to observe what happened.

You make a mental note to grab a gift for Katherine, both as thanks for taking care of Jordan, and as a way to ask very politely if she can get Nightlight to sit still for a few studies.

The Nightmare Man swoops around the spire, shouting a horrible amalgamation of what you think are different languages. You can almost make something out, string something resembling a pattern together, but it slips out of your ears too quickly, Koz’s shouts replacing it.

“Darling please give me a boost so I can grab this heinous monster and keep it still.”

Gladly. You reach out and loop a few of the strands through your fingers, playing with them as your magic seeps in and crackles around it. The threads thicken until they resemble proper rope, and Koz grunts as he hauls back and directs them toward the Nightmare Man. It scrambles around, swerving through the first few ropes, but finally, one catches it around its middle. Koz strains, removing his hand from your waist to grip the rope in both hands and drag the monster down until it crashes against the ice and snow.

He takes a few deep breaths as you whistle and nudge your heels to turn Kidra. The others start to converge as well.

*************

He carefully rolls and flexes his arms one at a time, trying to keep the pain of burning muscles under control until they’re back at the Pole or Jordan’s house. Luckily, he hasn’t pulled anything, but the one-two punch of being in the shadows and using so much energy will leave him tied up for bit after this.

The Nightmare Man is down, however, and that’s all that matters at the moment.

It struggles against the loop around its middle, trying to slice its claws through the silver. Kozmotis concentrates, keeping the tethers resilient against the strikes. They’re weakened from the blows, but still holding. And a moment is all they’ll hopefully need, though he wishes they had enough time and resources to take it out alongside the spire.

 _Soon,_ he promises it and himself, glaring into its empty eyes as they pass it. _Soon._

Sanderson similarly cuts off Nightlight from diving in for a stab, reminding him that they need to take out the spire, at least for now. The spectral boy huffs, and tosses a dagger right into the Nightmare Man’s shoulder anyway, but that’s the last of his stubbornness for the moment.

The two bright spirits continue to keep the perimeter wide around them, and as far as Kozmotis can tell, Jack is having a ball keeping the rear at bay. A few whistles chirp from his partner’s lips, and Kidra jolts under them, using their foreclaws to slice through a particularly dense wall of shadows. But they make it. They’re at the base of the horrid spire.

“Come here!” his partner yells, gesturing to all of them.

The shadows rumble off to the sides, growing bold as Sanderson and Nightlight bunch in and take their light with them. It’s thick, palpable fear at this point, almost too much to bear. But as soon as the oil-slick magic bubbles to their fingertips, Kozmotis concentrates and sends out several silver tethers. Jack leans over and lends some of his power to the mix. The electric-blue ropes of laughter from their last Antarctic excursion form before their eyes.

His partner shudders and gags.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

They nod, though it’s quite obvious from their greenish face that’s a lie. The glow at their fingertips is flickering; they have only a few minutes of the high left.

“Sandy! Nightlight!” they croak before taking several deep breaths and hunching over Kidra. The two don’t turn from where they’re watching the shadows.

“Sanderson! Nightlight!” Kozmotis yells.

They finally notice and close in a little more, touching the same, bubbling point in space where his and Jack’s powers have already melded. The ropes of laughter transform again, into ropes of blinding lights and laughs. All of the different magics loop around and around each other until finally settling into a pulsating cord.

“Not long…” his partner whispers, wrapping their arms around Kidra to keep themself stable.

“Rest, darling,” he replies, hopping off Kidra’s back and yanking on the ropes. He raises his voice. “Wrap these around the spire! Quickly!”

The others each grab a loose cord and swoop around the spire until it’s knotted up within the glowing cables. Kidra moves to his side, and his partner reaches out to give it one last jolt of energy.

Kozmotis looks around. Nightlight has one cord wrapped around his arm and is driving a glowing sword into a crevice of the spire. Sanderson yanks as much as he can while controlling tendrils of dreamsand at his back to bash the braver shadows away. Jack, for all his constant exhaustion with Burgess still being under the shadows’ influence, has one cord wrapped around his arm and another twirled around his glowing staff. Jack looks his way, nodding, waiting for the word.

Kozmotis can feel the rope holding the Nightmare Man fading. It’s finally clawing its way free, thread by thread, and the children he’s befriended in the last few months can only power him with belief so much. The shadows can overwhelm it; in fact, he feels the Nightmare Man breaking the last few tethers around its middle, sending a jolt of fear up the snagging threads, nearly breaking Kozmotis’ concentration as he holds the cords steady.

Nearly.

A final round of crackling magic zaps up and down and around the cords, and Kozmotis yells, “Pull!”

For a second, nothing happens except his partner slumping even farther over Kidra’s back. After a few minutes, however, there’s some give as one of the cords cuts through a section of the spire. The very top splinters and shatters as it collapses onto itself.

The violet charge at the base flickers for a moment.

“Again!”

Another section of spikes shudders away from the main spire, nearly crushing Sanderson in the process. Jack creates a small icy slope, like a lean-to, over his head at the last second. It shatters upon impact, but the spire chunk misses him entirely and Sanderson is safe enough to yank even harder on his own cord. Kozmotis swallows hard and nods to Jack, whose eyes are filled with nothing but excitement and fervor.

The Nightmare Man breaks free completely. But they’re almost there.

“Pull!”

There’s a series of cracking and splintering sounds, rising from the magic cords and all around. The violet pulses within the spire flare up, and a sound like a sonic boom cracks over the area, barely drowning out the sound of so many languages garbling together as the Nightmare Man rises and tries to redirect its armies into something productive.

But as the cords all slice through the spire at last, sending shards of cold and dark plummeting to the ground, the pulsing stops. The ice goes inert. The masses of shadows cry out, and then back down to a contained murmur. A few scream, a shudder raging over the area for a moment, and there’s a furious crash of water as the spire tumbles from its perch on the icy cliff down to the Antarctic Sea. Jack sidles up to Kozmotis as the flurry of snow settles down from where the collapse of the spire kicked it up.

“Shame,” he says lightly tapping his staff against Kozmotis’ head.. “After all, what could go together better than cold and dark?”

Kozmotis smiles to him. For the first time in awhile, he feels confident and sure of himself. Sure enough to answer, “Friends and fun, it would seem.”

He pauses before adding, “Thank you.”

“No prob, Bob.” Jack winks. Then he frowns and rises a bit higher, twirling around for a second. His head twitches, like a cat watching something crawl along the floor, and he points his staff just to the side of Kozmotis.

“Watch it!” he screams, shooting out a bolt of ice.

Nightlight is right behind it, plunging down toward Kozmotis, a stream of golden sand following close behind. Kozmotis ducks, covering his partner’s head and body with his own and nudging Kidra just out of the way. He makes his way over to Sanderson as he floats down to about ten feet off the ground, turning to see the Nightmare Man. Its claws pierce the ground where he and his partner just were. He summons as much silver to his side as his energy allows.

The Nightmare Man hauls itself up from the ice, ragged breathing emanating from wherever its mouth might be. It draws itself inward, becoming a thin, half-humanoid shape in the darkness. It raises one arm, and a slice in the air spews forth a small formation of fearlings. The Nightmare Man sputters something, and then disappears down the break in the veil, leaving the fearlings to rush hesitantly at the Guardians and Kozmotis. It’s exhausting, but they all manage to dissipate every last one just as the moon rises to its zenith in the sky.

The four stand back to back, covering each other in case another wave pops out of the ground. But as with the other spires, it seems that as soon as the darkness breaks, so does any desire to protect the area.

Only a small nub of the spire remains, a few spikes jutting from it. Kozmotis glances at his partner, laying across Kidra’s back, and he breaks off a few of the remaining shards. For later. When they wake up. He nods to the others, and they all lift off from the Antarctic ground, making their way north yet again.


	82. Together Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for >4k hits! it's nice to have so many new and returning readers. thanks so much! <3

You wake up two weeks before Alisah’s party.

Koz is there, snoozing at your bedside Kidra’s head in his lap. They perk up when you stir, gently lifting themself from him and snuffling over to you.

“Hey,” you say, trying to move your hand up to pet them.

Your arm is so heavy that you can barely make a finger twitch, so for the next time being, you just watch Koz nap. You’re surprised he’d let his guard down enough to risk anyone finding out he snores. He won’t be living that one down, not for at least a century or two.

It takes you three tries to gain control of your arm, and another few minutes to carefully direct all your muscles to hitting the right target. And that’s still not enough, as your hand slaps down a little too heavily on Kidra’s face. They yelp, startling Koz and causing his elbow to slip and his head to bow too far forward. He wakes with a gasp and a flare of silver.

“Sorry! Sorry, just me.”

He blinks around, before setting his gaze on you. And then he’s on you, wrapping his arms around you and gently squeezing you to him. You let him, mostly because you don’t have the strength to resist, though you keep trying to say, “I’m fine!” Between protestations, he fills you in on how much time you’ve missed.

In total, you spent four days in the shadow lair, and another day hopping north from Antarctica back to Jordan’s place. After that, you spent nearly a week asleep in your son’s spare room.

Two days after waking, you’re able to sit up on your own, but walking much more than across the room leaves you panting and tired. Luckily, there doesn’t seem to be more injury than some residual numbness and a persistent ringing in your ears.

“I think it’s because I inhaled a lot less than a whole container, like Tooth did,” you say to Koz. “Though, if I’d done the same, I probably could’ve taken out the spire by myself. And maybe the Nightmare Man, too.”

You mean it as a joke, but he can’t bring his grimace into a full smile.

Bless his heart, he’s trying his best to imitate doctoral procedures, prodding you and prying your eyes open to check them. You let him fuss, as he only gets more anxious if you tell him to leave you alone. Knowing the last time you both saw the results of inhaling Sources, you can’t blame him for being a little overbearing. But after the fifth day, you put your foot down.

“I’m _fine!”_ you say. He runs his fingers through your hair, searching your eyes before kissing you and crossing his arms across your back tightly.

All the while, Jordan has been hovering in a similar fashion.

“He and I take turns,” he says at about the week mark, after helping you sit back down.

You’re nearly able to go the length of the house before getting exhausted again. Kidra nudges their body into you to help stabilize things, then rub their beak against Jordan’s pockets. He produces a dog treat, teases it in front of their nose for a moment, and then tosses it to the next room. Kidra trots to retrieve and munch on it. He apparently warmed up to them a lot while you were out. He's still wary, but you catch him petting them occasionally, making babytalk at them.

“It’s been interesting talking to him over the last few days,” Jordan continues. “Weird, considering what he’s done. But a good kind of weird?”

“He’s a trip,” you reply. “Not a great start to everything, but I can’t say I’m not a little bit better for it.”

“Wish the circumstances were a little more peaceful.”

“True. But considering what I did to Arden, I don’t think I’m able to judge that much.”

“You don’t deserve mistreatment just because you were an asshole in your past. You know that, right?” He bores his well-practiced Parent Glare through you, and you wonder if he learned it from you, Arden, or Kiersten. Whoever it was, they did a good job. “Right?”

“Yes, I do. But again, it’s my past idiocy that even made me give him a second chance.”

He nods. “I figured as much. I’m mostly just passing along a weird shovel talk Katherine told me to tell you. After she told me her deal… can’t say I blame her.”

“Me neither.”

“I’m glad she’s looking out for you, though.”

“Yeah,” you agree. “Still getting used to believing people actually care, but it’s a nice, safe feeling.”

There’s a sudden flare of silver at your chest, and in the next second, Kozmotis stumbles next to you, going down to one knee for a moment before rising up and acknowledging you two.

“Hey, man.” Jordan waves. “Thanks for not using me as your anchor this time.”

“Of course,” he replies. “But I am still in need of practice before I start using it as a primary means of travel.”

A few minutes later, Jack swoops in, huffing and puffing. As soon as he’s inside, he dramatically points to Koz and cries, “Cheating!”

He dissolves into a coughing fit after that due to overheating. Jordan tosses him under a cold shower to revive him a bit, and the four of you spend the rest of the day chatting and relaxing.

*************

Kozmotis watches the children buzz around the backyard from his hiding spot in the azalea bush. They’re playing some variant of tag as Alisah’s parents and Jordan clean up the lunch and set up the cake. His partner tries to help as much as possible, only able to take so much in one hand as they lean on a cane with the other. Jordan tries to take the pile of plates from them, but they walk away from him as fast as they can, stopping only to lean against a wall and shake the cane at him.

Jordan looks over at his own children, checking to see if they’re watching him, before he mimes a vaguely hostile message to his parent. They stick their tongue out at him and continue to hightail it to the garbage can. Kozmotis presses his hand to his mouth, still trying to keep his cover intact. Which would be a lot easier to do if Kidra didn’t insist on poking their head into the bush every few minutes to focus their ears on Sanderson, right at Kozmotis’ side. He has a plan! A plan that requires his cover _not_ be blown by the necessary accomplice too early!

He’s finally able to make them turn away and rejoin the squadron of children eager to play fetch with them when Sanderson giggles.

“I wonder if you were always like this,” he whispers. Then he rubs the back of his neck, the meaning of “always” becoming clear. Kozmotis shrugs.

“My previous self wasn’t, for sure. But if Pitchiner was, then good for him. I hope I can do his memories justice from now on.”

He reaches down to the locket, still hanging over his heart. The Guardians thankfully hadn’t made him return to the Pole; Sanderson had vouched for him, and insisted that he be able to stay with his partner until they woke. He was made to leave occasionally, for work purposes, though he’s found it harder to work enthusiastically as an Imaginary Friend with the revelation of the fearlings’ hoarding belief.

Dimitris had noticed his reluctance immediately.

“Something’s wrong, and it’s about the fucking shadows, isn’t it?”

_You slip up one time, and suddenly they feel free to imitate you, don’t they?_ Kozmotis had thought at the time. But if the boy felt safer cursing in front of him than gathering himself up all polite in front of the adults, so be it.

“Yes,” he’d replied. “They’ve been gathering some of the belief we’ve been drumming up. Seemingly for their own purposes.”

“Kill them all!” Dimitris had jumped up, grinning so widely that Kozmotis could see the remnants of his short time with the fearlings in his face. Leni slaps his shoulder, though, and Dimitris draws himself back. “Right… Uh, maybe just defeat them, I guess?”

“Shadows come and go,” Kozmotis had said. “Killing them is a good thought, but ultimately impossible. Where there is light, so there is shadow, in a never ending cycle.

“But, yes, I will indeed take out as many as I can in order to stop their plans.”

The two children’s eyes lit up at that, and they simultaneously breathed out, “Cool!”

_One thing after another…_ He squeezes the metal locket tightly, feeling it start to warm up in his palm. For as much as he’s ready to just ambush the shadows, he, Sanderson, and North agree that allying with Mother Nature would be the best boon to their efforts.

“It won’t be easy,” Sanderson had said. “She’s sworn neutrality on the whole Guardian-Shadow war. But I think you can get through to her.”

Kozmotis hopes he can, less for the Guardians’ sake than his own. Four months of therapy has dredged up so much more than mere feelings. Pride, love, determination, direction. It really was all there the entire time, not gone, but hidden right below the surface waiting to be re-discovered as soon as the shadows left. As soon as he made the effort.

Kozmotis drops the locket again as he hears Jordan call the children to the table to sing “Happy Birthday” to Alisah. She sits at the head of the table, proud and preening as the audience sings and cheers. She takes a moment to think of a wish, and then blows out the candles in one breath.

“Good job,” Kozmotis whispers. He glances at Sanderson. “Not too much longer for our part, then.”

The main event done, the party devolves into chaos and children dropping from sugar crashes in waves. At almost the time when they party’s scheduled to be over, his partner whispers something to Alisah. Her eyes widen, and his partner whistles for Kidra. They trot over, and Alisah leans into their ear, whispering something. His partner glances over to the bush and nods.

“Showtime.”

Kozmotis lets out a high-pitched, constant whistle. Kidra’s ears swerve round and round until they land is direction. Alisah hears it, too, as she’s meant to, and she trails cautiously behind Kidra as they head over to the hiding spot and stick their nose in.

Unfortunately, it’s not the largest, deepest bush, so they only make it neck-deep before stopping. That simply won’t do, and it takes a hurried minute of Sanderson promising treats for Kidra to disappear entirely into the bush. Sanderson leads them away from the yard just as Alisah thrusts through the shallow bush.

Kozmotis hurriedly huddles into himself, and as soon as he hears her gasp, he starts staring at his hands, turning them over before his eyes.

“I don’t believe it…” he says. He darts his head and eyes around before finally landing on Alisah, whose eyes widen to encompass most of her head. He smiles. “Did you free me?”

“Kozmotis,” she breathes. He nods.

In an instant, she drags him out of the bush to introduce to her friends. It’s a little overwhelming, being around so many excited children at once, but with every introduction, he can feel another thing click on, feel another part of himself lighten and grow. And when he looks over to his partner, watching from their seat, perching their chin on their hands, he soars.

*************

It’s another day or two after the party before Jordan approves of you taking some alone time outside of his house.

“Look, don’t let me stop you from doing your thing,” he says, narrowing his eyes the least bit in Kozmotis’ direction. “I’ve long accepted that this is happening. Just be careful. Especially you, please,” he says directly to you.

With that, you steal out to your treehouse. It’s the least bit water damaged from nearly a year of sitting unattended, but there’s more than enough comfort to be found here.

He captures your mouth as he pins you against the wall. It’s been so long since it’s been just the two of you, but you remember how you left off and push him back until he’s just leaning his forehead against yours.

“Koz,” you say.

He groans and starts to close back in. You press against his shoulders. He sighs in frustration, but keeps back. You run your hands down his neck, loving how he shudders, but you bring your fingers down to the locket and turn it over in your hand.

“So? Any luck with your daughter?”

You know damn well where this is going to end up in the long run, but a little catching up and drawing out never hurt anyone. In your experience, a little drawn out teasing makes it all the better. He takes a deep inhale and exhale, and holds the locket up a bit, prying it open to let you both look at the picture.

“Enough luck, as it were,” he replies. “I still need to have Toothiana use this in conjunction with my tooth to provoke the memories. But overall, I think this is a good sign.”

He caresses your face with both his hands, and you eagerly lean into the touch. His thumb lingers on your lens-less eye, and you open your other eye to look at him. The sun is setting, so you don’t have too many more minutes to revel in his naked expressions and glowing eyes at the same time.

Your vision is still the least bit lopsided, but you must have yanked out enough of the shadows to make it bearable without a lens. Once you get back to the Pole, you’ll ask North if he can make another one, but you can live until then. If anything, it’s a relief to be able to see the world without needing to use a lens again. Well, technically you still _need_ one, but the need is a lot less dire and immediate than before. A few more days won’t make the mark spread anymore, won’t keep you tied to the darkness in terrible ways.

That alone is worth celebrating.

He closes the locket and tucks it in his shirt, focusing back on you and you alone. He’s being so delicate still, probably because of your last encounter on top of your recent adventure. The cane Jordan gave you rests just to your side, just in case.

Kozmotis takes a deep breath. “Are you feeling better?”

He’s asked that every day since you woke up. You nod yet again, replying, “Better than yesterday, and much better than the day before.”

His hand hovers over your hair, fingertips just barely grazing the back of your head before he jerks them away. “But are you well?”

You sigh, really trying to think how to answer. “Technically, no, I’m not. Not now physically, and I haven’t been well mentally for decades. Possibly my whole life.

“But I’m better than when we parted a few months ago. I’m no longer reeling from Easter, and I’ve even been able to make some progress with the Sources. Hopefully, with our friends’ help and your help, I can be even better for another long while.”

You think about what’s to come. “Though, maybe I should focus on _maintaining_ where I am for the moment, cause what’s coming next is _definitely_ going to knock me back a bit.”

He laughs. “Understandable. I wish I could do more, but I see what you mean.”

The ache from holding yourself up for so long gets too much to ignore, and you tap his wrist before lowering yourself to the floor. He follows, scooting around until he’s leaning against the wall, and you can feel his heartbeat thump against your back. You gladly sink into him, and he traces his thumb over your chin before clutching your waist and nuzzling into your neck.

You hum and lean into the touch, pushing back until he laughs and finally places a proper kiss to you. Hissing, you trail one hand across his knee at your side. He shudders and jerks, bumping his teeth into your neck where you think he may have been planning to bite just then. You expose more of your neck and continue to move your fingernails up and down his thigh.

In response, he traces his own fingertips over you. One hand inches upwards, until it circles your breast for a moment. You press your chest forward to get more of the touch. As you do, he takes the opportunity to bite down, cupping your breast and squeezing. Your breath hitches at the sudden dual sensations, and your fingers twitch, frozen on his leg.

“Ah…” You let out a pitiful, strangled sound, and Koz reacts by enclosing his legs around you just a bit more, licking over the mark he’s definitely leaving.

“Tit—” He squeezes your chest again. “For tat.”

“So you joke now, huh?”

“If you’ve been paying attention at all, you already know my sense of humor is _transcendent.”_ His other hand clicks open your belt and starts sneaking under your waistband. “With all your knowledge and quick wits, hopefully you can keep up with it.”

“Oh, is that so?”

You try to squirm your way out of his hold, but he keeps a tight grip on you. As soon as you lean back again, he brings his hand up to your face, turning it and leaning over himself so that he’s looking you in the eye.

“Is this all right?” he asks. No smile, no hint of laughter, just dead seriousness. You nod.

“Yes.”

He kisses you, then says, “If it stops being all right, please, _please_ let me know.”

“Locket?”

He nods, then furrows his brows. “For now, yes. I don’t know how comfortable I am using that anymore, given its origin. We can use it today, but I’d like to talk about it later.”

“Of course. But for now…”

“Locket.”

With that, he release your face and goes back to your neck, digging in with his teeth as he shoves his hand up your shirt and furiously knead at your breast, shoving you against his chest in the process. You reach back with your hands until they find his hair, and you latch on. His breathing quickens as you pull him even closer, and the hand at your waist, backtracks to tug the waistband down.

Once he has more room, he hums against you and lightly trails a single finger over your outer folds. You spasm and whine at the ghosting touches. Oh, you’ve missed this, and the months going without seem to have made you far more sensitive than you remember.

But much as he’s also anticipating this, needing this, he takes his time.

The first few circles of his fingertip are there to make sure you’re ready and can feel it, but nothing overly sure and committal. This goes on for several minutes, a steady rhythm of his fingers, the squeezing and eventual pinching at your chest, and his cool, fast breaths between bites and sucking.

He takes his fingers away, and you huff. He laughs, but starts to lift the shirt over your torso.

“Let’s get this off, hm?”

And as soon as your skin is bare, he takes a moment to simply rove his hands over your back and shoulders, massaging into them until you feel yourself relaxing.

One of his hands come up to the nape of your neck. You pay close attention, but he simply massages circles there for moment, nibbling at your earlobe.

“Yes,” you whisper, closing your eyes as his fingers lace through the hair at the back of your head, moaning at the smallest of tugs.

“Let me know,” he says.

It’s easier now to fight against the terrifying memories and focus only on the sensations of pleasure the touch brings you. You still get to revisit the cage, the pain, the knots in your stomach. But every gentle tug, paired with a bite or another swipe of his fingers back between your legs, makes it easier to leave that cage faster. But, you're a little out of practice, so you can’t last much longer than two minutes or so.

At the word, he drops his hand back to your stomach and rests his forehead against your shoulder. A few minutes later, you lean back and kiss him as you pull his fingers back to your core.

He’s more insistent after that, moving in faster circles that leave you panting and moaning and whining as he gets closer and more fervent, only to pull away just as the climax builds. He’s hardly unaffected by this song and dance; you grind back into him and he has to pause all of his movements to lean against you for a moment and catch his breath.

“Koz,” you say.

He grunts and starts to leave a trail of hickeys across your shoulders, pinching at your nipples again and dipping into the slick pouring out of you. He smears it over his fingers and uses it to help his movements against your clit.

Faster this time, and you contribute to the rhythm as you grind backwards again and again, until you’re arching like a bow out from him, sitting on your knees. He wraps himself around you, devoid of his robes between moving positions, and he slides his cock against your slit again and again as his circling has you building and building again. But this time, he doesn’t stop too soon, straining out your name as he grips your hips tighter.

You tense until you think your muscles and tendons will snap like violin strings. And then a relieving wave of pleasure rips through you, bounding from head to toe and back again. You let out a shuddering sigh of relief and lean your head back to his neck, turning to lick the sweat away.

He cries out at that, holding you around your waist and thrusting. But you pry his hands from your sides, ignoring the indignant grunt, and you turn yourself around and press him back until he’s leaning against the wall.

His breathing picks up as you meet his face. They’re flickering all over your face, stopping only to look you directly in the eyes, and he reaches out again to draw you in. You allow him one quick kiss, and then you drag your lips and teeth across his own neck, shoulders, ears. He writhes under your caresses, chanting your name and bucking.

“Darling… darling please…”

You drift farther down, and as you leave a few kisses across his stomach, his eyes fly open and he watches you, licking his lips and clutching your shoulders. Finally, you settle between his legs, wrapping your arms around his knees. You look up at him once again and wink.

“Your majesty.”

You don’t give him time to process that before taking half his cock into your mouth. He _yelps,_ scraping his fingernails across your shoulders and down your back. You pull back a bit, letting your tongue drag and curl around it, before diving back down. His panting and minute whines are the only thing you can hear for a moment, but when he goes right back to your name, it spurs you on faster. His stomach muscles spasm under your touch as you drag your hand around his body, trading between the pads of your fingertips and your nails.

He clutches at your shoulders even tighter, meeting your dips with trembling thrusts. You pause to drag the tip of your tongue up to just under the head and press it in firm circles there. His breathing picks up, his legs jerk, and he groans and leans over you. He then pats your shoulder and starts dragging you up until you’re straddling him, twitching member once again settled between your legs.

“Look at me,” he says hoarsely, reaching around until you feel him take himself in his hand.

You happily oblige, leaning in and pressing your open mouth to his, but not giving a true kiss. Leaning your foreheads together, you draw as close as you can and catch his eyes. He pumps himself faster, going taut as a wire, and you hold his face in your hands, rubbing your noses together.

He screams your name one last time before the energy rushes out of him all at once, waves of shivers and shudders following close behind. You grind against him a bit, pressing kisses and bites across his face and neck until he wraps his arms around you and responds in kind.

You find yourselves laying out on your cloak once again, trying to keep the dust and dirt away as much as possible. He runs his hands over you again, murmuring low and fast. The burst of energy you had for that fades as you cool down, and the ringing in your ears flares up again to the point you can’t quite make out what he’s saying save for, “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

You think you make it out clearly, but it seems half a minute later, your mind resurfaces to consciousness. Before you open your eyes, you hear some scraping, items being placed down, and a soft curse when another item falls to the floor with a loud crack.

Opening your eyes, you see Koz, shirtless and bending down to pick up an old, cracked plastic paper file. He winces as he turns it over in his hands, glancing at you and flinching when he sees you’re awake. You move to sit up, finding yourself bundled up in both your cloak and his robes.

“Hey.” It takes clearing your throat twice to get the word out. “How long was I out this time?”

“Just about two hours,” he replies. He taps the file against his hand and gestures around. “I got a little bored waiting, so I’m… attempting to clean this place a bit.”

“Yeah, it kinda needs it.”

You extract your hand from the cocoon of cloth and rub your eyes and then reach for the cane. After hauling yourself up, you make your way over to him, leaning into his chest and nuzzling in. He sets the broken file down and kisses your forehead.

The midday sun shines in enough to throw warm sunbeams around the small room, the soaked wood counter glimmering a bit. You’re surprised it lasted so well through the summer storm season. It helps that a hurricane hasn’t directly his this town in about twenty-five years, but there’ve been enough close calls. Whatever magic you unknowingly imbued into this place keeps out the worst, and you’re happy the result of your own hands still stands.

“Hey, Koz?”

“Yes, darling?”

“After this part of everything is finally over, and we have a long stretch of nothing ahead of us.” You look up at him, and he nods you on. “Wanna move in?”

He blinks a few times in surprise.

“I mean, you don’t exactly have your own place to go back to. Unless you want to stay at the Pole—”

“I’d love that.” He runs his fingers over the splintery cabinets and un-level counters, and then glances at the cuffs still around his wrists and neck. “I think I can work something out with the others. It’ll be nice not having ten thousand eyes on us all the time.”

That’s still a ways off, you both know. Hopefully not another year or so, but there’s a few loose ends you all still need to tie up before you can settle down on the other side of whatever this whole thing has been.

But you push that immediate thought out of your head for now, enjoying a taste of quiet, peaceful domesticity before you return to the front.


	83. Friend, Husband, Father

“Are you ready, babe?”

Kozmotis looks up at his partner from where he lies on the floor, and places his hand over theirs at his elbow. This moment has been a long time coming.

_Well, hopefully…_

The tinge of cynical doubt stirs up the nervousness that’s been growing in him for the last few days. Ever since they got back to the Pole, he and his partner have had to fight their way through an increasingly overwhelming workshop to get anywhere. His partner was especially miffed when they saw that the yetis had been using their lab space as a makeshift breakroom, and worse, had cleaned. Good thing that a bit of shed yeti fur captured their attention enough to start examining it thoroughly and mostly forget and forgive the intrusion.

Still, it’s been difficult not to feel like he’s being lost in the shuffle. North has canceled every sparring match so far, and Kozmotis is on the verge of not asking again until New Years. Especially if right after the cancellation, North is just going to ask for his help lugging something heavy around or doling out papers and supplies to the yetis. Help is one thing, being drafted into production hell is quite another.

At least he’s still been allowed at the Palace again.

Sanderson peeks in from the other side of his vision, Toothiana and a few other fairies following. She holds up the tooth and the locket, Sanderson holds out some dreamsand, and his partner touches their magic to all three. The magics combine, and they hold it delicately before letting the golden haze seep over him entirely.

Kozmotis doesn’t fall asleep, as it were. At least, he never senses that brief moment of unconsciousness that precedes breaking into the dreamscape. If he pays close enough attention, he can just see vague images of the three at his peripherals. But it’s difficult to do, and his willingly open mind easily snaps its attention to the images playing before him yet again.

Gaudy, glorious parade floats, decorated in the various colors of the Golden Age Alliance. He stands beside Tsar and Tsarina Lunar as they graciously wave to the gathered crowds. They reach a part of the route where fewer people line the streets, and the two leaders take a moment to let their polite smiles down and their bodies relax. Kozmotis enjoys some respite, as well, but he keeps a careful eye on the taller buildings around them, one hand on his sword.

“Kozmotis, relax while you can,” Tsar Lunar says with a cheerful laugh. “It’s going to be a long day for all of us.”

“Thank you, your majesty, but should anything happen to you—”

“Please, Kozmotis, call me Nik for once, I beg you.”

“All right…” he takes a breath, but can only bring himself to say his full given name, “Zvutnik, I’m responsible for your well-being right now. Yours and hers.”

Tsarina Lunar rolls her eyes grasps his arm. “And we thank you. But you’re more than just our bodyguard. You have been for awhile.”

“Again, thank you, your—”

“Vezda.”

“Vezda…” Kozmotis can’t easily break himself of such habits so easily, even if he is a trusted friend. It’s even harder to separate their circles when they’re all in uniform, and in public nonetheless.

He closes his eyes, however, letting the joyous calm of the moment fill his lungs as he inhales, and work its way out through the rest of his body on the exhale. He watches the sky, happy to see the moons he knows all too well cross-crossing across his home. Come the night, the stars will be back in their most familiar positions again, and he and his wife can watch them gleam from the privacy of their home.

“Home,” he whispers.

“That’s better,” Tsar Lunar says, patting his shoulder. Kozmotis nods.

The respite lasts only a few more minutes, and then the sides of the route are once again lined with throngs of cheering citizens. This lane is completely packed, to the point where the people are unable to move from where they’ve settled. The cheers start as soon as the float turns the corner, and the nearest people catch sight of who’s on it.

“Lunanoff! Lunanoff! Lunanoff!”

The texture of the crowd means that the cheers aren’t coming just from citizens of Orion, but of so many allies and friends from constellations beyond. The Tsar and Tsarina clasp hands again and put on their kind, regal smiles. This last bit is the last run-up to the palace, where the elite—selfish, boring, and good-hearted alike—are preparing for a soiree to celebrate another treaty closed.

The Alliance is forming so rapidly that he can hardly catch a break. Not that he necessarily wants to; it’s fulfilling work, with a good cause if he can see this through. The fearlings don’t make it easy, with their constant, ferocious attacks on civilians, and their incessant armies. Fighting them on their own terms is repetitive, never ending, almost hopeless, and trying to lead a charge with hopeless soldiers is a losing strategy.

Which is why he’s started capturing to rehabilitate instead.

The move hasn’t been very popular with his peers, but Lord High General Kozmotis Pitchiner has seen interesting results since adopting the practice. So many of the shadows are unfocused, willing to die as easily as they replace themselves. But those few… He has his suspicions, but he wonders if those had once been people, like him. Once living beings in a sense that he and the other Golden Age citizens can comprehend.

Though he shudders to think about what happened to turn them, clearly not all is lost if a few can remember gentleness, graciousness, goodness. And given how connected the shadows seem to be to each other, perhaps it might be possible to teach the rest of them peace. It’s just a thought, one he’s put into practice a bit. Just to test the waters.

“Kozmotis!” Tsarina whispers fiercely to him, gesturing him closer. He obeys instantly, but once he nears, his so-called friends thrust him to the front. He freezes, unused to so widespread and exposing scrutiny. But the crowd bursts into even louder shrieks and cheers.

“Pitchiner! Pitchiner! Pitchiner!”

He instinctively moves to parade rest, standing still and tall, yet comfortably enough. The crowd doesn’t stop, only seems to get more excited as he falls in. Behind him, he can hear Tsar Lunar chuckling. The man approaches Kozmotis and clasps him around his shoulder.

“Give them a pose,” he whispers through his teeth. “We need to protect their morale as much as we protect their physical bodies. Don’t just stand; stand _triumphant.”_

Tsar Lunar reaches down to his ceremonial saber and nods for Kozmotis to do the same. He whips it out of its scabbard, and following the Tsar’s lead, holds it up to his face, bowing slightly after he does. And then the Tsar reaches out, grasping Kozmotis’ arm when he mirrors the movement. The Tsar smiles and thrusts his saber to the skies. Kozmotis quickly imitates, and the crowd erupts at their display. They briefly tap their swords, and return to waving. 

That’s when he sees her, shoving her way through the crowd. She holds their child tightly to her chest to protect her from the jabbing elbows and wild dancing. Not too far behind, her bodyguards part the crowd, trying to keep up. But she doesn’t notice them. She meets his eyes and shoves her way to the barriers lining the road.

“Xio!” he cries, rushing to the edge of the float nearest to her. He waves, a genuine, uncontrollable smile spreading across his face. “Xixi!”

She waves, yelling something that gets swallowed by the ruckus around her. They’ll meet up at the palace in due time; being a Council member, she’s expected to be there tonight as well, though he suspects from the Tsar’s and Tsarina’s faces as they see her and the baby that an early reunion is inevitable.

He calls again, “Xiorena!”

She lifts their daughter’s hand to wave to him. Unfortunately, she— _He knows her name, why can’t he think it?_ —unfortunately, she wakes up at that moment, flailing and fussing as much as she can against the swaddling. He can see her break down into tears, and if not for damned Nik clutching his shoulder, he’d have flung himself off the float by now to calm her down.

Instead, he can only call out, “Xixi! Xiorena!”

And he calls out to his daughter, too. They’ve met for such relatively short time, and she’s so young, there’s no way she’d recognize him. But he must try, must try to be the father she needs. He calls again and again and again, until the vision threatens to break and fizzle at how aware he’s becoming.

“Hang on…” There’s another familiar voice at the edge of his consciousness, one he loves just as much as he does Xio. _Wait, what happened to Xio?_

There’s a flicker of iridescence, like the swirling stars in the inky void, and suddenly Kozmotis is at the palace, cornering—but not really cornering—the Tsar of Constellation Orion.

“That thing on the float.” He lowers his voice. Tsar Lunar leans in. Kozmotis shakes his head. “The posing and posturing… That was the least bit dishonest, don’t you think?”

“To the people?” Kozmotis nods, and the Tsar sighs. “You’re really challenging the Tsar’s judgement?” Before Kozmotis can say anything else, he holds up his hand and says, “Good. Keep me humble.

“Yes,” he continues, “It was the _least_ bit dishonest. It was dishonest in that it was mere showmanship. A fiction, based on the current reality and excitement of the day.

“Like I said, we owe them high morale. Not only is a depressed populace one that attracts the fearlings, but it’s not one prepared to fight with the abstract quantities of hope and wonder and fun that they can generate themselves. Belief dies with apathy, and if belief dies—”

“So does the magic,” Kozmotis says. Tsar Lunar nods.

“Look, it was a simple display of empathy. A play off of their fervor and expectations. I wasn’t ignoring suffering or downplaying a plague. They’re happy yet another alliance has been made, and if a simple pose with a sword can enhance that pride and excitement, then it’s worth it.”

Kozmotis doesn’t know yet if he agrees, but he can see Nik’s point. Too often on the front lines, Kozmotis has seen the dramatic conclusion of apathy and depression. Not cities razed by shadows, but ruled by them, all life grayed and sucked dry. No happy memories. No imagination. No hope. Dreariness in the same, monotonous patterns day after day.

Nik clears his throat, and Kozmotis looks at him. He opens his mouth to say something else, but a soft patter of feet interrupts them.

Tsarina Vezda Lunar and Councilwoman Xiorena round the corner. Vezda carries his daughter and Xio, for all her patience, is trying hard to act as if she’s not watching every twitch of the Tsarina’s hands as she holds the baby, ready to snatch out in case their daughter should fall.

Nik gasps and jogs over to coo over her, as well. Kozmotis makes his way to Xiorena, wraps his arm around her waist, and kisses her temple. She finally sighs and leans her head onto his shoulder, and he can’t be more ecstatic about feeling her breathe for the first time in months. She reaches up and places a hand on his chest.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hello, yourself.”

“Is it wrong to be relieved that someone else is holding the baby, but simultaneously so anxious to be apart from her?” she asks.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh thank goodness.” She closes her eyes and laughs once. “I thought I was going crazy.”

“Not yet, no.”

“One day… One day…”

“When you go, I’ll follow.”

She pecks his lips and continues to watch Vezda and Nik coddle their child, caressing each other as they whisper about their hope for the future. After a bit, Xio leans up to him and whispers in his ear. Kozmotis thinks its daring to even ask, but surely the Tsars would be honored by such a proposition, even if they needed to refuse. He clears his throat, catching their attention.

“Your majesties,” he says, bowing enough to be serious, but not quite enough to indicate he’s forgotten their personal familiarity. “We know you’ve been trying for your own child for awhile—”

“Hopefully one day soon,” Vezda says. “I stopped my birth control months ago, but sometimes it takes a year for the body to get back into the swing of things.”

Nik clutches her waist, staring at— _what is her name?_ —at Kozmotis’ daughter all the more intensely. Xiorena looks up at him and nods.

“In the meantime…” He takes a deep breath. They’d discussed this beforehand, but proposing it was an entire ordeal altogether. “In the meantime, Xiorena and I would be honored if you would consider being our daughter’s godparents.”

The Tsars freeze. Vezda unconsciously clutches his daughter to her chest as she gasps. Kozmotis gulps.

“W-we understand if you cannot, but—”

“But you’ve become some of our closest confidants and friends,” Xiorena says. “And we trust you with our daughter’s life should… should anything…”

“Don’t say it!” Nik says hoarsely, hand out. “I know what you mean, but don’t you dare speak it into being!”

There’s a long pause between all of them, one in which Nik and Vezda exchange a few looks, ending in mutual nodding.

“We swear, we will protect—” Kozmotis can see the name forming on his friend’s lips, but strains and fails to decipher it. “—so long as we live. Even if the worst never comes to pass, we will do this.

“So long as you swear to return the favor.”

It’s Kozmotis’ turn to stumble over his breath and thoughts. The Tsars of Orion… they can’t possibly be asking of him what he thinks.

“Lord High General Kozmotis Pitchiner. Grand Councilwoman Xiorena Pitchiner.” Vezda looks between the both of them. “When we finally find ourselves with a child, will you do us the honor of being their godparents?”

“We’ll guard yours,” Nik says, “And we only ask that you guard ours.”

“Of course.” Kozmotis says at the same time Xio says, “Naturally.”

The Tsars’ eyes glimmer with tears, and they grab Kozmotis’ and Xiorena's hands in theirs, shuffling the baby around to make it work.

“I knew we could count on you, my friends,” Nik says.

“We won’t let you down,” Kozmotis replies. “We wouldn’t dare.”

“Thank you.” Nik and Vezda return their attention to his daughter, who’s finally sleeping peacefully, despite the intense conversation. Vezda starts to return her to Xio, but Kozmotis clears his throat and holds his arms out.

“I’ve been largely absent since her birth,” he says quickly. “I’d like to know my own daughter.”

They hand her over, and then all three start chatting about upcoming events and voting sessions. Kozmotis pays them no mind, focusing exclusively on the tiny child in his hands.

She’s still asleep, a comical expression on her face like it’s taking a lot of concentration to do this. So determined at barely a few months old. He whispers her name, holding her close to his face and gently bouncing her.

“I’m sorry you had to be born into a time of strife,” he whispers. “There’s a war going on, and it’ll be happening for a while. But I promise you, there is still hope! People are fighting against the shadows every day, in large and small ways.

“I hope you’ll become the kind of person who lives that fight day to day, as your mother and I try to do. But I hope you can do this in world where careers like mine are unnecessary, or better yet, extinct.”

She stirs, cracking open one eye, and then the other. She blinks and screws up her expression, struggling against the fabric around her to try and rub at her face. She makes a small whimpering sound.

“Shh…”

Kozmotis finds a bench nearby and sits, rocking her back and forth to calm her down again. He brushes his knuckles against her face until she settles back down, opening her eyes and focusing intently on him. She doesn’t move, doesn’t cry out, doesn’t frown. She simply watches him for a minute.

Her tiny hand, suddenly freed from her side, reaches up and grasps his pinky finger. Her palm is too small to encompass it, but she gets a tight grip nonetheless. He laughs and curls it around her fingers.

“I don’t like to promise things often, especially when I don’t know if I can keep said promises. But for you, I’d promise to upturn the constellations, collect every moon, and wrangle every speck of stardust if it means you’re able to be whoever you want to be. I’d spend ten thousand years fulfilling that promise, if that’s what it takes. I just want you to be safe and content, for all your years.”

She drifts off again, and the time finally comes for he and Xio to put her in the care of a babysitter. The dinner starts, the dinner ends. The speeches are dull and drawn out, the dancing is stiff and forced as everyone tries to impress each other. The alcohol flows readily, and eventually the haggard guards jog to and fro to whisk away those who’ve had too much and aren’t skilled enough to hide it.

Finally, he bursts through the door of his home, swinging an equally intoxicated Xiorena around as they sing a popular love ballad ridiculously off-key. The babysitter awkwardly yet politely relinquishes their daughter back to their care and makes their own exit. It’s been a long night, but he’s not quite ready to go to bed, and drags his family out onto their balcony, continuing to sing.

Kozmotis twirls her and their daughter until he himself gets dizzy, and she has to lead him over to the railing to catch his breath. It’s then that he looks up at the spinning sky above him and freezes. Tears drip from his eyes as he takes in the magnificent night sky he’s loved and adored his whole life.

“Shh… Koz,” Xiorena giggles beside him. She brushes her free thumb over his tears and kisses his cheeks before snuggling up beside him and watching the stars as well.

Their daughter wakes without them realizing. It’s not until Kozmotis looks down at her that he sees her wide, staring eyes watching the skies. He swears they’re even following the starship that chooses now to glide up from the port and arc across the expanse, dusty exhaust glittering in its wake.

“It’s even more magnificent when you’re up there,” he tells her. He holds her so she can see properly. “So much to see in such a large universe.”

He can tell she’s born to touch the stars and travel among them. Whatever she wishes, whatever she desires, he will get for her. She deserves at least that much. Oddly, it’s as if the next few years take the opportunity to play out before him. Perhaps he’s more drunk than he realizes.

But there she is, walking and talking. Giving them both heart attacks when she slips past them to sneak out on her small boat to play among the starfishes. Making incredible observations and arguments so young. Pitching fits when she doesn’t want to do something, crying when she gets hurt, learning lessons the hard way when neither he nor Xiorena can adequately explain why doing something would be ill-advised.

Heartache, anger, compassion, unconditional love.

A stubborn angel of his own creation.

His bright direction in an uncaring void.

Seraphina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seraphina > emily jane ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> and so we've come to the end of part 3. i honestly thought this would be the final part of the story, but it seems we're in for a part 4. so join me new year's day for the beginning on the final part of this monster. i don't know if part 4 will be as long as the others, but i'll have a blast finding out.
> 
> in the meantime, comment, kudos, share, whatever you prefer. id much appreciate it, and i do love hearing from yall.
> 
> again, next update 1/1/21, the start of a brand new (hopefully better) year. happy holidays!


	84. Playing Catch-Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Here's to the new year. May she be a damn sight better than the old one. And may we all be home before she's over."
> 
> -Col. Sherman T. Potter, _M*A*S*H_ , "A War for All Seasons"

You already miss the cool, yet muggy air of your home. You already miss Jordan and Alisah. You already miss the appearance of complete peace and mundanity.

But there’s still so much to do, and decreasing time to do it in.

“So ya tested on yourself again, huh?” Bunny says.

He’s in your lab space, thankfully being rude in the most superficial ways. He’s been true to his word that he’s not your friend, nor does he want much to do with you, but he cares about the fate of the world enough to work with you. It’ll do.

“Yeah,” you reply, handing him a few tubes as you reach in for the corresponding slides. “I mean, I was almost consumed by darkness, so I figured it was worth it in the long run. And now…”

You pick up the shimmering tube, resonating with the three Sources you’ve been able to pull from. It’s far more diluted than your previous samples, and not just because raw Source energy is _really, really volatile_ to your average spirit, let alone a human child. No, this is diluted because there’s also a mix of other magics in there, enough of them, you hope, to make some sort of cure for Rina.

"Now I can say from experience that we really need to be careful with this stuff, especially until we understand it better."

Bunny lifts the small concoction to his face and sniffs it through the glass. He then coughs and rubs his forehead, wrinkling his muzzle.

“As much as that withdrawal hurt, and as much as I hated to see Tooth out for two weeks,” he says, “this just seems like our best bet for taking down the spires and the rest of ‘em.”

“It's a temporary solution with too many variables at play." You shake your head. "I'm comfortable using it as a foundational ingredient, but not as much more. All the other magics and combinations I can whip up should be able to get rid of the shadows for now.”

“But the raw Sources could potentially do it forever,” he corrects.

“I don’t know if that’s possible.” You continue as he opens his mouth, “Look there’s a lot of impossibilities belief and whatnot can make happen. But there’s probably still some limits on it. Or a metaphysical balance. After all, how do the shadows keep propagating themselves?”

He shrugs.

“Fear is everywhere, and if we’re content with trapping this bunch on this planet, that just means they’re not going anywhere else. And that also probably means they’ll eventually adapt to whatever I mix up for the near future. Like bacteria mutating and gaining an immunity to antibiotics.”

“You can’t make a vaccine-type thing?”

“In time, maybe. But that’s a very shaky ‘maybe.’”

A spot of silver glows at your chest for a moment, and a sensation of closeness washes over you. It’s a new thing Koz has been doing: inspiring feelings of closeness while he’s away by activating the bond between you two. He went on a surprising speech about it not long ago, talking about how useful it could be to keep “his kids” (“What did… Darling, what did I say? Why are you laughing like that?”) thinking about him and what he’s apparently been talking about with each of them. It’s like a hug, or a kiss directly to your heart.

Bunny sighs and re-organizes the items in his hands, holding something out to you. He wants to say something; his left ear keeps swiveling toward you. But he says nothing.

“You okay?” you say, hoping to get it over with.

“Look…” He opens his mouth, then closes it. He tries again. “Look, I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout when you came to me and Katherine months ago, right before the new moon battle.”

You listen.

“You got mad at me cause I kept sayin’ how the Boogeyman can’t change. Yelled right in my face ‘bout I can’t believe that since I believed you could change, despite your hand in a literal massacre and that thing with your spouse.”

“That stings, but okay.” You look at him. “Where are you going with this?”

He pauses for a moment, screwing up his face before saying, “You might’ve been right.”

You snort. “‘Might’ve…’ Okay.”

He rolls his eyes. “Look, I’ve been talkin’ with Katherine and Tooth, and they seem to have made peace with workin’ with the guy. I feel like I’m the only holdout acknowledging his actions.”

“No one’s stopping you. Hate away!”

“I shouldn’t, though.”

At that, you put down everything you’ve been messing with, placing them where you’ll be able to pick up where you leave off, despite the inherent chaos of the system. You fold your hands and turn until you face him.

“You have my full attention now. What’s wrong?”

He splutters. “I just said—”

“You’re talking to _me_ about this,” you say, pointing to yourself. “So something’s wrong enough that I’m the one you felt could listen properly. Or you’re trying to convince me of something. Am I right?”

He stares, open-mouthed, holding up one finger and looking like he’s about to set off on an angry rant. But it never comes. Instead, he looks distant, flicking his eyes all round the room. He eventually settles back against the wall, looking confused.

“What’s so wrong right now that you think you shouldn’t hate him?”

“It’s… It’s not him in particular—I mean, it is! Very much him. But in general, I shouldn’t hate.”

“It’s like the anti-hope?”

“Oh, no there’s a lot of hope to find in hate. Hope for ‘The Others’ to get what’s comin’ to ‘em. For you to be proven right. For the world to fit into the neat little boxes you want it to. Honestly? Kerosene on a fire.” He shrugs. “I just don’t know how—or if—I can reconcile my job with my past. How do I move on from that?”

“Well, you’ve got to at some point, right? Even if you’re still angry and bitter, you have to move on from letting it consume your whole being.”

“But I can’t forgive him. I just can’t. But I have to work with him.”

“Bunny, I’m probably not the right person to say this, but maybe moving on and forgiveness aren’t the same thing? You can have the first without doing the second.”

You two meet eyes and an honest moment passes between you. He almost looks vulnerable as he fervently straightens his whiskers again and again. Then he shakes himself and says, “Yeah right, and when did you become the expert on this stuff?”

 _“You_ came to _me_ to talk about this, thank you very much!”

He says nothing else, the conversation ending there. You turn back to your work, only speaking to him to ask him to pass you some supplies and hold something down while you dig into it. His ear swivels toward you a few times, and you constantly glance at him secretly from under the new lens North made. But neither of you manage anything.

About an hour later, you and Bunny stop working as North calls for a short break. Though, his definition of a “break” this time of year seems to involve a lot of work, in your opinion.

“Maybe I should go easy this year,” he says, pacing, flipping through a mess of papers in his hands. “I have many believers. So much belief. Small Christmas is okay once in awhile, yes?”

“Don’t let the shadows get to ya, mate,” Bunny replies. His ears get their characteristic anxious tic, however, and he unconsciously thumps his foot against the floor, growing a small carpet of flowers. “What do they know about belief?”

“Apparently enough to trick us into doing dirty work for them!” North nearly crushes his glasses as he snatches them off his face to rub his eyes. “I do not want to cancel holiday—and I do not think that even is possible anymore—but Christmas! Whole season of belief and believers! I already have hundreds of letters…”

“And right after that, Easter. So what?” But Bunny falters, taking another moment to clear his throat and continue. “No, I don’t really mean that. But we can’t just let ‘em make us afraid. Betcha that’s as much what they want as collectin’ the belief.”

“Strike earlier, then,” you say. They look at each other, then back at you.

“All right,” Bunny says. “So what’s the preferred date of attack?”

“Sooner than later, right?” You squirm under his apathetic glare. “Maybe we should aim for before the end of the year?”

“Doesn’t give us much time, especially with you and Tooth still injured.” North resumes pacing. “But there are several holidays on way to New Year's. Halloween and Thanksgiving are not one of ours, but create belief nonetheless… They can use it as much as we can.”

Bunny sits, and all of the restless energy drains from his ears and feet and travels straight to his face. His nose twitches rapidly as he slides down in the chair and stares into the corner. You also freeze up, sitting like a coiffed aristocrat—spine painfully straight, ankles across each other, shoulders back. None of you speak for about three minutes, and North once again breaks the silence.

“Christmas must go on,” he says. “But I will limit production this year. That should give me time to help take down rest of spires, free Burgess, and get rid of monster in sky.”

Oh yeah. _That._ You and Bunny glance at each other, his face unreadable, but piercing.

“That’s the last big obstacle, isn’t it?” he says. “How’re we gonna fight something hangin’ out in space and made of fear and belief?”

“I don’t know about it being _made_ of belief, but what the shadows said seems to imply that enough belief will… blast it off into space, I guess.” You shrug. “They just called it a ‘tether,’ so I can only extrapolate and guess from there.”

No one has any better idea or theories, and the break ends there. As you all head out of North’s private room, you ask if they’ll be going with you to the Island for the first try at exorcising Rina.

“The Boogeyman gonna be there?” Bunny asks.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Then no thanks.” He taps his foot and waves goodbye as he leaps down into the Warren.

“North?”

He nods and shrugs his coat on, despite the Island being a more than temperate place. “I shall go see. I’m curious at what you’ve been concocting.”

“Cool. I just need to grab a few things from my room, so I’ll meet you back here in a sec?”

You scamper back to you room, reaching over, around, and under Kidra to retrieve the last few remnants of notes that you may find relevant. Some of them are legit notes from your readings and observations. Others are more recent passages and quotes you’ve been writing down in an attempt to inspire an open and believing attitude when you perform magic. It’s still frustrating to have to ignore all your healthy skepticism, but you have seen an improvement in the ease of magic.

Just the other day, you were able to snap together a replica of the wand thing that helped you escape the shadow lair so many months ago. It was just as fragile as the first, though, and crumbled after a few minutes. But you’d done it. After so long, you were able to mold something abstract-ish of your own volition.

After a few minutes of yanking papers, you finally just have to wake Kidra and be on your way. Just as you move to shake the beast, their ears bolt straight up, their head following close behind. They stare behind you, ears still and trembling as they growl and rise from the floor.

You twist in time to see a form coalescing from iridescent, shimmering blobs. The form rises up to the ceiling, elongating a portion of itself up and up, its other half spreading into a squat body low to the ground. The upper portion arcs down, a ragged mane sprouting from the tendril, which thickens out to a neck. The neck joins a long head to the hunched body, and said body sprouts two long arms bent at too many angles. They curl into odd fists: the knuckles laying on the ground to hold the body up, pointing two long claws backwards.

You glance at Kidra’s foreclaws. They’re much longer that this creature's, but shaped exactly the same on the hand. The haunches of this creature also resemble Kidra’s. You purse your lips and load an arrow, ready to make a move if need be. Despite everything, however, you wait.

Finally, the head bends the neck more until the beaky snout is less than a foot from your face. Two large ears blossom from the back of its skull and drop down to rest back against its neck. It has no eyes, just a bony plate that stretches up and over its skull. But unlike Kidra’s, which just juts up from the skull in a small arch, this creature’s splits, and the two portions curl like miniature horns until they almost meet at the tops again, creating a round cutout.

The creature leans in and touches its snout to your forehead.

_“Hello, my knight.”_

“Selene?” The whisper rushes out of you, like you’ve been punched in the gut.

 _“Do you like it?”_ The creature lifts a knuckle to its chest, cocking its head. You swear the corners of its maw turn up in a smile. _“I’ve been working on perfecting this image for many years.”_

“You’re really Selene,” you say. “You’re really here.”

 _“Is that so surprising?”_ Her ears flicker for a moment. _“Why is that so unlikely in your mind?”_

“I just…” So many questions erupt across your mind. So many that they drawn each other out and you stumble over your words except for, “Why?”

_“I do not understand the question.”_

“Why are you here?”

_“I have often asked myself that question. However, I find pursuits of the philosophical ultimately pointless in the long run.”_

“No, I mean why have you manifested… this here, in front of me, now?”

_“To speak with my knight, of course.”_

“Okay… What do you want to say?”

The creature jolts her head up towards the window. In an instant, she moves over to the square in the wall, thrusting it open and slithering her head out into the Arctic air. You move over to her just in time to see Nightlight’s glow streaking up until its pierces through the perpetual clouds. Even over the few months you were gone, the clouds remained, cutting off direct contact with the moon.

 _“One of your number is going back to the moon. To speak with that man.”_ She snorts in much the same way Kidra does when they’re sighing. _“He will be back soon.”_

“You’re not answering my question.” You glance towards the door. “I have someone waiting for me. I have to go.”

 _“The thing surrounding the planet…”_ She slinks her neck back around you, enclosing you until you can feel a breath-like flow of wind across your neck. _“It calls to me unlike anything else I have experienced before.”_

“What do you mean? You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Despite the circumstances, you panic at the idea of Selene going away. She’s given you no clear direction in this life, but she’s been the only constant from the beginning.

 _“I do not know if I can go anywhere. I am the moon.”_ She shakes her head and brings up one of the claws to lightly scratch at her jaw. A long, forked tongue hangs from her mouth as she pants. It licks across tusks jutting from the upper and lower mouth. _“But I feel pulled toward it. As if it is familiar. Or simply welcoming.”_

She curls around and points her face at you, staring despite the lack of eyes.

_“Do you think I should go?”_

“No! Whatever it’s doing, it can’t be good, for you or us.”

She’s silent for a long moment, moving only to reach her hand-claw out to Kidra’s ears. Kidra remains frozen, growling low. They hunch and plaster their ears back as the claw scratches over them.

_“I am still impressed you created this, despite not seeing my previous ones.”_

The creatures that night. Twenty feet tall, tossing you around, tearing down trees. Too much. The revelation of Koz’s daughter killing you was already too much. This is beyond too much. But what exactly can you do about it?

The blank face regards you for a moment. _“Are you afraid of me?”_

“I don’t know.”

_“Hmm… I do not know if I want you to be. How curious, is it not?”_

“Did you just come here to warn me about you… being drawn to the shadow in space?”

_“To warn? No, it was not to warn. To express my confusion? Yes, it was that.”_

You turn, looking Selene directly in the face and place your hand on her… shoulders? Where the top of the legs meet the body. Some of the mane tickles your eyelashes as you get close.

“Look… This has been weird for me for so long. But stick with me for a little while longer. We’re working on ways to take the shadow out.”

Her mouth opens wide, the corners contorting into the semblance of a smile. _“You—and the rest of your companions—remind me of that man in the light. Whose face shines down upon this planet. People like him; they look to him all the time.”_

“Unless they can’t see him.” She once again cocks her head. “But I saw you.”

_“And I, you, that night. It was great happenstance.”_

“Sure…”

 _“I will return to my source.”_ Her ears fall limply against her neck again. _“And I will continue to try and decipher this being’s call. I will let you know the results.”_

“Okay.”

The twisting arms and long claws wrap around you before the whole creature phases through you. She looks up toward the sky yet again, and with a soft sigh, her form dissipates into the same iridescent globules. They fly like a flock of birds, looping out from the window and up into the sky, following nearly the same path Nightlight did. And then she’s gone again.

 _At least it’s a permeable membrane,_ your mind says faster than you can concoct another way to phrase it.

North drums three times at the door, and you jump so hard you trip over Kidra and nearly knock yourself out on the windowsill.

“Are you ready?” he calls. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!”

It’s not quite a lie; you’re worried about Selene now, and what her being drawn to the entity might mean. But the encounter was so jarring in the first place, it’s hard to be overly worried at all. You scramble around, picking up any papers that flew from your grip, and then you toss yourself over Kidra and burst from the door so fast you nearly knock North down, too.

“Time to see if this is happening, I guess.”

He nods, tosses out a teleportation globe, and you two walk through to join Sandy and Koz at Rina’s cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot begin to describe how intense this year has been for me. Not just because of the pandemic, but because I started writing this.
> 
> Before midnight on New Year's Eve, I managed to pass the 300k word mark. And I cried because writing so much at all has been ecstatic, but writing so much so fast is bewildering. This is the first time in so long that I've 1) enjoyed writing to this degree and 2) felt motivated to write. I've essentially written three novels, and this chapter begins the fourth (maybe? it might be shorter than the others idk).
> 
> I want to thank all yall for reading, commenting, and being as excited about this as I am. I know there are some story flaws in this behemoth, but the most important part to me is that it exists at all. Here we go into the final stretch. <3


	85. Trial and Error

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit thank you for 150 kudos!

Despite Kozmotis' best efforts to avoid them, so many people come looking for him, begging him to help save Christmas, or something of the sort. There are so many quests, all piling and overlapping each other, that he can’t help but think about his partner asking him to move into their charmingly decrepit treehouse. If only that could happen so soon.

He keeps imagining domestic bliss—an image that comes easier to him more than ever, after so many memories resurface of his previous life. It’s taken a lot of work, and there’s still so much more to do, but if he tries to recall anything from Pitchiner’s life, it comes more easily now. And he realizes that it’s no wonder the man got so complacent.

Despite ongoing conflict, Pitchiner lived a charmed life. High social status, fame, heaps of praise, an endless amount of people telling him what a prodigy he was. Sure, parts of that still resonate within him and rear their heads, but so much more of his current self is shaped by the tragedy of his fall than of his initial rise.

 _Sorry, Pitchiner,_ he thought not too long ago, _Your efforts did not go to waste, but they were good-natured ignorance at best._

In fact, he’d asked his partner, “What’s the difference between optimism and ignorance?”

They huffed, having been interrupted from making marks across his chest. Eventually, they shrugged and answered, “I guess optimism is looking for the best, even if you know it might not happen. And ignorance is looking for the best because you don’t know anything else could potentially happen.”

It’s as satisfying an answer as he can could up with for the moment.

But, between therapy sessions, helping to move teeth back into the Palace, field work, and private time with his partner, Kozmotis starts preparing himself for something even more terrifying than the shadows powered by pure belief.

“Just tell North you need to… go on a quest, or something of the sort,” Sanderson says, losing another game of tic-tac-toe with himself. “He’s already agreed Mother Nature would be a useful ally.”

“Seraphina…” Kozmotis whispers. Sanderson pauses for a second, but just shrugs. He watches the Sandman lose and win a few more games, and then he sighs deeply. “I know that’ll be enough for the man, but will you all be all right if I disappear for awhile?”

Sanderson looks at him. “Oh… I figured I’d be leading you to her. Maybe even talk you up a bit so she won’t immediately blast us out of her home with Category Five winds.”

“The thought is appreciated, I assure you,” Kozmotis replies. He flicks a bit of silver to his chest, and for a moment, a thin thread appears. It drifts lazily for a moment before he feels a faint twang of surprise reverberate up it, and then it thrashes directions before cutting out altogether. “But despite everything, I think I’ll be able to find her on my own.”

“No sneaky approach?”

“No, I want her to know I’m there.”

“Are you sure?”

There’s something about the way Sanderson says that. Normally, Kozmotis would easily brush such a generic question off, even if he fully doesn’t believe his own answer. But the honesty and urgency with which Sanderson says it, looks at him with that uncannily sincere glare, makes him pause and think.

“I suppose…” He weighs his options. “I suppose my ideal is letting her know I’m there. To gauge her attitude. To give her the option of letting my find her. But since she’s been so reluctant to listen to my explanations in the past, perhaps your friendship could ease me and her into better communication.”

Sanderson stares at him, then shakes his head, bemused look on his face. “I never get tired of how you sound when you’re trying to hide the fact you’re overthinking things a bit.”

“Well, given my recent memory prowess, it’s a trait I share with Pitchiner.”

“Screw him.” Kozmotis almost faints in disbelief at Sanderson’s words. “I’m more amused at how you sound now in your post-Pitch life.”

“Sanderson,” Kozmotis says, grinding his teeth. “I deeply appreciate your friendship and incessant positive attitude. But I would prefer never to hear that name ever again,”

“Pi—?” He covers his mouth as soon as Kozmotis glares at him.

“Yes. The very one and same. I may no longer be Pitchiner anymore, but neither am I _him.”_

Sanderson nods. Then nods enthusiastically. “Never thought I’d see the day…”

“And now you have.” Kozmotis draws an X in silver over the nigh-forgotten game board, and then connects the three matching letters on a diagonal. “Time to work towards a new life goal, perhaps.”

At that moment, the corner glows, and seconds later his partner, Kidra, and North emerge from the portal. His partner clambers down from Kidra, rushing over to embrace him. He gives them a quick kiss, and they hold up the glowing mixture they’ve been working on.

“Fingers crossed,” he says, moving toward the cage.

Rina stirs immediately at his approach. She swipes at his skirts, trying to dig in. He summons the tether between them, however, and she calms, watching the silver glow and pulse at her own chest.

“It’s all right, Ms. Rina,” he says quietly. “We’re going to get those shadows out of you. And then we can go bug hunting for as long as you’d like.”

His partner stands next to him, flinching slightly as Rina breaks from the stupor and hisses. But they steel themself and open the bottle, taking a deep breath and covering their mouth with their shirt collar, motioning for the others to do the same. Rina scrambles around, the hiss escalating to loud chitters and then to shrieks.

Every sound she makes shoots another hole through him. Not for the first time does he begun to think that he’s wrong, that she’s beyond hope now, that this process will only result in destroying her.

“Do that thing a favor and end it,” the rabbit had said to Sanderson on a rare visit to the Island. He shook his head. “I can’t watch you do this anymore.”

Sanderson only had to hold up a finger to make Kozmotis stay back, even though the rabbit had definitely said it to get a rise out of him. He dragged the rabbit away to entertain him a few rooms over before a fight could really break out; Rina had already paused and started paying attention to the atmosphere the moment the rabbit spoke. But an hour later, as Kozmotis went to stretch his legs and _just so happened_ to walk past the room they were in, the rabbit’s voice was breaking.

“Do you really think it’ll work?”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

“And what do we do if it does? What about all those fearlins’—who may have been people or kids—that we just bashed our way through?”

“Are you saying you want to go back and change the past?”

A sharp inhale of breath. “Mate, I’m not much of a Pooka, but I would _never_ profane that sacred duty.”

“Then the question isn’t ‘how do we fix every wrong,’ but instead is, ‘how can we prevent it from happening ever again?’”

There was a stretch of silence so long that Kozmotis nearly left them to their chatter, but then the rabbit spoke up again.

“Why’s he got to be so obsessed with this one, though? Why can’t he leave her to us?”

“Oh, Bunny… You know how it is with first believers.”

Another hour later, and the rabbit had returned, with supervision, to hover menacingly but silently in the threshold for a bit as Kozmotis read another book to Rina.

But now, with him nowhere to be seen, the real experiment begins.

The hazy Sources drift under her face, whisking upwards as if she’s inhaling them. For a moment, nothing changes. And then she shivers, a pulsing glow rippling just under the darkness out to her claw tips. She freezes, twitching in a rigid posture. Kozmotis once again summons the silver thread, watching as the place where it connects to her chest glows in the same colors of the Sources and other magics.

“Okay, okay, okay…”

His partner cracks their knuckles and rubs their hands together. They close their eyes and mouth a phrase that he can’t hear—possibly an inspirational quote that they’ve been collecting. They bring their iridescent power to their fingertips and step forward, getting close enough to place both hands over Rina’s shoulders.

She shudders under the touch, but doesn’t bolt away. At this success, his partner smiles at him. He returns it, and redoubles the power he’s sending out through the tether. As he does, he starts to feel his partner reaching in and molding through the shadows. It’s not so much a concrete feeling as much as he can sense Rina’s various emotional reactions as his partner goes further.

At first, she’s merely stunned, wary and defensive, much like any fearling is on the regular. They know they’re expendable, and thus try to prevent their expense as long as possible. The emotions—he’s so relieved he can call them emotions rather than instincts or some other vocabulary more befitting animals—her emotions fluctuate into ribbons of curiosity and smears of hope.

 _I know you’re in there,_ he says through the tether. _You freed me from that spell, and I shall free you from this fate._

Tendrils of shadows start to form and drift upwards like whiskers. His partner mumbles to themself as they go on. A stream of consciousness about how they’re molding through the magic, re-convincing themself to simply believe and not think too hard, talking themself through the nuances of using magic. He almost cries at how they’ve grown. From such a naive, reclusive spirit barely able to use their magic even after three-quarters of a century, to the leading theorist of magic, as far as he’s concerned. They may not be a prodigy at using their magic, but they consider every use they make.

And then Rina starts to scream.

It’s unlike the usual shrill noises a fearling is prone to making. The shadows are lifting away the least bit, and her mouth returns to having lips, forming shapes when she starts screaming. Shrieking. Agonizing.

“Shh… Shh!”

His partner tries to quiet her as they bury their hands elbow-deep into the murk. He closes in, wrapping an arm around them to keep them grounded as they work. The Source mixture was just the beginning, of course. Like how his spirit managed to rip the excess shadows from themself, the Sources were the base of power, a loosening of the foundation, as they told him. But it’s not absolute, and Kozmotis is still wary of too much going into Rina. She’s just a child, for goodness’ sake.

 _I’ve called upon "goodness’ sake" far too often, lately._ Or not enough, in the grand scheme of things. His partner pushes on, deeper into the shadows until they start overflowing around their arms.

Rina’s screams only get more high-pitched, and she starts twitching.

“Kozmotis?” North calls warily from the sidelines. But this has to work! Please, whatever arbiter of fate there is in the universe, this must work!

forty-five seconds of screaming is as much as he can take. Even as her eyes morph into the more familiar ones of a human. Even as her scream becomes less animalistic and more in tune with her human voice. Despite that, only five more minutes is what his mind can bear until he caves.

“Stop!” he yells, surging the power through the tether. He grabs at his partners arms and drags them from the writhing darkness surrounding Rina. “Stop! Stop!”

They plaster their arms to their sides, dismissing their magic immediately. Rina doesn’t stop twitching or making noises, and the shadows settle back over her.

“I’m sorry…” his partner whispers, stepping back as he descends onto the poor girl. “I can’t get them off of her like this, I’m not—”

He straightens up and holds them for a moment, just to reassure them that he doesn’t blame them. Blame. Fault. Two different things. He understands a little better now that he has the impulse to combine them. But even if his partner is the current cause of Rina’s anguish—fault—they are not the reason why Rina is as she is—blame.

The shadows, in fact, are to blame. And he will hold them accountable for every squeal, every spasm, every fluctuation of color the fearling form of Rina goes through. Perhaps there may be a few previously sentient forms he barrels through, though, and that is the only thought that pre-emptively stop him in his tracks.

Once upon a time, he believed in rehabilitation.

Twice upon a life, he didn’t believe in anything except vengeance.

Thrice upon living, he's defending the ones held back by the worst. Rina is no exception. He can fix this. With his partner and the support of his friends and the Guardians, he can fix this. But not today. Not with Rina like this: shrieking in unadulterated pain.

Oh, he wants to lash out. After all, how can someone so careful for so long and yet fail this hard? How can someone so learned and studious not foresee such consequences? How could they hurt this child? This young believer Kozmotis has been watching over this half a year as his actual bonding time went toward her long-time tormentors?

Those are impulses he doesn’t voice. Maybe he would have a year ago, a year and a half ago. But not now. Now he doesn’t care, as this is still the young girl who immediately saw through his harsh exterior. Hid behind him as he expressed his own annoyed viewpoint. Tried to explain to her why humans are drawn to cruelty. Who made him promise her a true name in exchange for relevant information.

But his partner looks guilty as they strain to hold their arms to their sides, and he manages to extricate himself both from the odd hold around Rina, and from the cell.

“Progress… Progress…” he mutters, grabbing his partner’s hand, rubbing it for a moment. “We at least learned something from this, right?”

“The mixture isn’t right, is what I learned. But damned if I know what the right one would be.”

“It seemed to work for little bit,” North says. “She changed back to normal human for moment, right? Then solution is close by!”

His partner manages a small smile and a chuckle, reaching out to squeeze the man’s hand. They nod.

“Yeah. Just gotta try again until we get it right.” They purse their lips for a second. “I’m wondering if a sample of the Source of Fall would help this along.”

“Maybe,” North replies. He points to Kozmotis. “You were saying last Source is near Burgess?”

“Yes, unfortunately. I don’t doubt trying to get near to it will be more difficult than anything else we’ve been charging at.”

“Hit and run?”

“Possibly, but I don’t think it’d be as simple as Antarctica last April. The shadows will be on high alert because it’s a town bountiful in fear _and_ because it’s the site of one of their last spires _and_ because we have a bone to pick with where they’re squatting. Months sitting on the land, however, have no doubt made them that much more powerful.”

It’s a complicated situation, with no easy answers to attempt right away. Eventually, they all teleport back to the Pole, where North starts diving in to various projects. Kozmotis and his partner start to steal away to the balcony to relax, but right before they can exit the doorway, the giant goose lands in a hurried jumble.

“Hey!”

Ms. Goose waves and leaps down from the saddle. Her pet lets out an irritated squawk, rising up and flapping her wings a few times before waddling to the corner to preen. Ms. Goose ignores the animal and grabs his partner’s shoulders, immediately re-directing them back inside. A wide smile covers her face. She’s several yards away when Kozmotis feels something at his shoulder as well, her turns to see Nightlight grab his collar. He drags Kozmotis back inside so fast his breath has to catch back up to him as the spectral spirit more or less tosses him into a chair at the planning table.

“Katherine, what—” his partner says.

Ms. Goose holds her hands up, and then she rushes over to the railing to peer into the workshop hub. She scans the chaos for a moment, shakes her head, and then she takes a deep, deep breath.

“NORTH!”

The thunderclap of a word rattles the rafters, shaking ancient dust particles free. The soundwaves also shake several workstations, and various yetis suddenly have to scramble to prevent their projects from collapsing and having to start again. But, the shout has its apparently intended effect. Almost all chatter and movement in the hub ceases, and all eyes snap to her. In the center of it all, North stands there, arms raising as if to ask, “Why?!”

“My father’s coming back to Earth in three days!”

North storms his way up to the loft area, sweeping Ms. Goose up into a crushing hug. Kozmotis’ partner leans over, a questioning look on their face.

 _Right. They don’t know him beyond the author of the books they’re learning from._ Kozmotis just shrugs and gestures to where North and Ms. Goose are rambling to each other excitedly. Nightlight loops over them, settling to sit on the railing between them.

“Ombric?”

“Yes!”

“The good man himself! I wish I had something to show him. Progress I have made on some magical application…” North says.

“I think he’ll be impressed at how much further you’ve brought the workshop.” 

“In which case, we must make trip to greet him!”

“There’s… a bit more.” She stops to catch her breath, her excitement still palpable, but softened with her next bit of news. She turns to him and looks him directly in the eye. “Kozmotis, my father and The Man In The Moon want to speak with you at Big Root.”

He clenches his fists, far from expecting that news. He can only sputter out, “In Santoff Claussen?”

She nods.

“The town I attacked several times, with intent to hurt if not destroy?”

“Yes.”

He lowers his face into his hands and groans. Eventually, one of their little field trips is going to kill him when they bring him somewhere excessively unforgiving.

“Kozmotis.” He peeks through his fingers at North. “That was in far past. Chances are, most kids in town will know you only as Kozmotis, Imaginary Friend, not as Boogeyman.”

“The elders, however, may not be so willing,” he replies bitterly.

Ms. Goose sighs and nods at that. “True. But Manny specifically asked to speak with you there, so we will honor his request.”

That’s even _worse._ He’s avoided being in the direct moonlight for months already, ever since Nightlight cornered him and frolicked through the moonbeams in his Pole bedroom. He’s simply not ready, not to speak to The Man In the Moon himself. His godson, whom he failed miserably so long ago. He shakes his head.

“I can’t…”

“Kozmotis—”

“I can’t!” His partner rubs his arm, but he stands up to pace. “Not him. Not yet! Besides, I have to… I have my own child to find. I have to convince her to help us. I have to—”

“Koz!”

His partner steps in front of him, clasping their hands over each side of his face. They cup their hands around his eyes like blinders, making him focus on them and only them. He meets their steady gaze, and hooks his hands around their elbows, hanging there for a moment. They breathe in deeply, hold it, and release slowly. They do this a few more times until he unconsciously matches their breathing, and barely two minutes later, he’s relaxing more.

“Koz,” they say slowly, but firmly. “It doesn’t matter when you face him. It will hurt. Regret and guilt do that. But at least you have regret and guilt now, instead of cold, calculating revenge. You might as well rip that bandage off in one go instead of trying to drag it out over who knows how long.”

“But our…” he struggles for another excuse, vaguely gesturing to the pile of scribbled notes he’d been sorting through.. “Our strategy timeline…”

“Maybe he’ll have an idea. I think we’re aiming for sooner than later, but if either Ombric or Manny have something that’ll help us. We should listen, right?”

They’re right. Kozmotis nods in agreement, and as soon as he sits down again, North and Ms. Goose gently bombard him with all of the information he needs about the town. He takes a little bit more easily to the conversation as they then go over his strategies for the India spire, as well as how to get at and destroy the others contained in the shadows’ realm.

But as he passes a few windows in the workshop after North yet again harangues him into heavy lifting, he swears he can see an extra-bright halo around the waxing moon sending moonbeams to dance and play just outside.


	86. To Santoff Claussen

Somewhere through the trees is the town, North promises.

You’re surprised he didn’t just teleport you all there in an instant, but he insists on checking the wider perimeter for shadow activity before entering Santoff Claussen proper. They haven’t received word from the town about any uptick in activity, but with the news of more spires in the shadows’ reserves, and some troubling messages from Ganderly, the Guardians don’t want to take any chances.

The quiet woods send yet another chill up your spine. Different from the literal cold making you shiver despite the ten thousand layers of clothes you’re wearing. Thankfully, also different from the spine-tingling horrors you got courtesy of the shadows in their domain. North had warned you that a myriad of spirits and mythical creatures infuse this area with wards of protection and other magics to keep it safe from intruders. Not necessarily for the sake of the town, even, though over the centuries, several quiet understandings have settled into place between the forest spirits and the townsfolk.

You personally figure you won’t have to sneak glances between the trees rushing by to try and see one of these spirits, but only because North and Katherine are loudly singing some sort of Russian shanty. Hopefully, they know what they’re doing, and that the spirits are either not malicious or will let North, Katherine, and their friends pass unharmed.

Kozmotis hums lightly behind you as you ride on Kidra just behind North and Katherine’s reindeer. The tune seems to be the same as the shanty, and every so often, you pick up a few actual words he sings under his breath.

“You know this one?” you ask. He shrugs.

“I heard it numerous times back in the nineteenth century. It’s less of a favorite and more that I can’t get it out of my head sometimes.”

“Ah, a Soviet earworm.”

“The Soviet Union didn’t quite exist then, but yes, more or less.” He furrows his brow. _“Does_ it even exist anymore?”

“The Soviet Union? No, it broke up in the late twentieth century. I was, like, one year old when it happened.”

“Oh…” He shrugs and hums few more bars. “That didn’t last long, did it?”

“It lasted at least three generations. But for an immortal, no, I guess not.”

“That must be why I had to turn to other sources of fear in that century. I started losing a grip on the Cold War sometime around midcentury, if I recall correctly.”

You have no idea what to say at that, opting to let the mild existential crisis building in the pit of your stomach simmer there for the time being. The logical, endless conclusion of immortality is a subject you’ve broached very few times with Koz, and you can only defer that long discussion and potential breakdown for so long.

_So long as I can rely on these weirdos, I think I might just be okay._

North and Katherine stumble over the shanty for a second, then banter in the same language for a bit. Koz translates as much as he can, letting you keep up with the exaggerated drama between the two friends ahead of you. Eventually, they settle into another language and another song, one you swear you can understand at points.

“Very Early Modern English, I believe,” Koz says, joining in, this time loud enough to catch their attention. North glances back, confused, and then he smiles and continue the song. Katherine raises a brow his direction, but she’s in a good enough mood to start going into sung rounds.

The sinking sun starts to create long shadows when North finally cuts off the new song he started and hushes everyone. Then he motions for them to hang back. He directs his reindeer ahead on the path, and looks around. After a moment, North calls out in Russian, translated by Koz as, “Is that you?”

A soft, green glow flickers between the trees, a humanoid body following not long after. A gorgeous, ethereal woman steps out onto the path, warily eyeing him for a moment. A flush starts making its way over your whole body as she smiles and struts over to North. There’s a small huff behind you.

“Come on now, stay with me, darling.” Koz leans over and nuzzles into your neck, leaving a small lick that jolts you out of the trance as a cold wind whips over you all.

At your yelp, the glittering, jewel-covered spirit locks eyes with you, then glances to Kidra, and finally to Koz, all in the span of less than a second. She cries out, and blips out of view.

“Come back!” North calls. He jumps down from the reindeer and runs a few steps ahead on the path. Katherine turns around wildly, backing her steed up and turning it until she’s effectively blocking your front. North jog past you to your rear. He calls again, “We can explain!”

A flicker of green to your right catches your eye. When you look over, it’s as if the rest of the world falls away, and it’s just you and this odd, glowing forest spirit.

She beams, tossing her head and causing her hair to obscure half her face for a moment. The flush returns, overtaking your whole body this time, and she seems to notice as she roves her eyes up and down your form. Giggling, she holds out her hand, waving you to join her. You slide off Kidra’s back and take a few, tentative steps her direction. Her grin only gets wider, yet kinder, and she blinks her large, bright doe eyes a few times.

“Uh…” is the most eloquent thing you can manage at the moment, reaching out for her welcoming fingers.

Something echoes at the back of your mind, however. A muffled shout. Two, no three muffled shouts of your name. But no one else is here. You even look around, but your gaze doesn’t check your surroundings for long, sticking to the glowing spirit and her beauty. There’s even a faint blush at her cheeks, and she can’t keep steady eye contact with you. Adorable.

Suddenly, silver strings burst up in front of you at the same time a shout in a language you don’t know pushes you backwards. As soon as the threads weave together to hide the forest spirit from view, you blink, and the world comes rushing back in.

Koz is behind you, arm wrapping around your shoulders and preventing you from moving forward. Kidra helps, yanking on your arm with their mouth and whining as best they can with the mouthful. Hoofbeats to your side startle you. When you look, Katherine glances over you, nodding when you meet her eyes. And you hear North from beyond the threads, pleading with the forest spirit to let you pass.

“I know it looks bad. I know this is Pitch Black—but isn’t! I swear!”

A chiming language yells back at him, and if Koz’s power weren’t blocking your gaze, you think you would have immediately snapped your attention back to the voice’s owner. Instead, you rub your head, and then Koz turns you to face him.

“Focus on me,” he says, touching his free hand to your cheek.

You willingly lean into the familiar touch, and he lowers his forehead to yours, muttering low and quick. You reach out and wrap your arms around his waist. The silver glow behind you drops, and he presses you close to him. His physical presence and tangible smell clears your head, and you can finally process North’s voice nearby, yelling at someone. Katherine joins him, and yet another voice joins the kerfuffle.

At some point, the languages bend and dip and swirl until finally forming words you understand.

“—Pitch Black will _not_ set foot in the town ever again, nor will anyone aligned with him! I’m disappointed in you two.”

“We are trying to tell you that this spirit is not evil! Pitch—Kozmotis has joined Guardians’ side to fight shadows!”

“Trust me,” Katherine says in her firm voice. “I hate to vouch for this man due to what he’s done, but he _has_ dedicated himself over nearly the last year to our side.”

There’s a pause. You manage to squirm until you turn yourself around in Koz’s arms. The forest spirit is still there, still beautiful, but whatever spell she cast over your is gone. Now that you can see, there’s an uncanniness about her that’s not apparent at first glance. Her grin, for instance, is filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, and her body is jointed like a doll’s. Very impressive, whatever she is. But she’s certainly not benign.

She catches you staring and slips past North and Katherine. Koz throws up more silver at your side, but you reach out a hand to her.

“Sorry about that,” you say, hoping your trembling isn’t too apparent. She ignores your hand and stares you down, as if trying to see through your soul. “I know this looks really bad, but I promise we mean no harm. We’re going to meet with Ombric and—”

“Ombric Shalazar!” Her expression shifts immediately. She glances back to the others. “He’s back?!”

“He’ll be back in exactly three hours, fifty-eight minutes, and ten seconds,” Katherine replies. “We’re meeting him, as he has advice for us about…” She points into the air. “Bad things. Moreover, he has requested Kozmotis be in attendance.”

The forest spirit looks back at the two of them, her face now a fight between her joy and wariness. Eventually, she sighs.

“If he says they should enter Santoff Claussen, then I will let you pass. I shall go on ahead and let the villagers know of Ombric’s impending arrival.” She eyes you and Koz again. “And I shall also warn them of what to expect.”

Koz simply nods. You lower your hand and stand there as the forest spirit nods to Katherine and North one more time before flickering into a smear of green light that dashes between the trees.

“Well… Could have gone better,” North says. “But could also have gone much worse. Are you two okay?”

After affirming you’re all right, the small party gets back on the move. They finish scouting the perimeter of the forest and finally lead you along the correct path, deceptively hidden as an impassable mass of brambles and dead ends.

_This town really doesn’t want to be found._

Just ahead of schedule for Ombric’s return, you finally exit the forest and enter the whimsical hidden village.

*************

Kozmotis keeps his eyes trained on the back of his partner’s head. He hears the whispers as Kidra passes by. Well, at first, they’re whispers, but after a few minutes, an elderly voice cries out, “That’s Pitch Black! That’s the Boogeyman!”

All curiosity falls away, leaving only confused, hesitant mumbling. Thankfully, no more attacks come their way, not even a thrown boot. At his peripherals, he catches the flare of a green glow, and right after hears the growl of a large bear. He feels himself flush; he hadn’t realized the bear was still alive. Surely after all this time it didn’t have too many hard feelings of him possessing it, right?

 _To be fair, it got killed due to the possession._ He winces to himself. _But, I mean, it did get better…_

He hunches to make himself smaller, curling even more around his partner until he’s leaning over their shoulder, eyes closed. He smiles a bit as he listens to his partner cry out in amazement at all the contraptions and inventions decorating the different houses. Even after all this time, this town hasn’t moved far from its roots as an inquisitive bastion of whimsy and learning. And speaking of roots…

“Oh my goodness.” His partner pokes him. “Koz! Koz _look_ at this!”

The gnarled branches of Ombric Shalazar’s mystical house stretch even higher into the sky than he remembers. Given it’s had another few hundred years to grow, that’s not surprising, nor is the immense magical aura coming off of it. His partner turns around and looks at him, incredulous.

“It’s called ‘Big Root.’” he says. “There’s a lot of magical knowledge stored in there. And with his return, there’s soon to be so much more.”

North and Katherine dismount, but as Kozmotis helps his partner follow suit, a cluster of citizens surrounds them. Kidra flattens their ears back, growling and getting their hackles up. He clings to his partner, making sure not to overbalance them. Even with their cane in hand, they’re still in recovery. He's grateful that their arrival coincides with twilight, but utterly lost as to how best steal away and hide from the townsfolks’ stares.

“North,” one of the elders approaches him from the circle. “You cannot expect us to believe that you would willingly partner with the Boogeyman, of all beings? And bring him _here?”_

“Moreover, who is this other spirit he clings to?” Another citizen gets near and jabs out at them with her cane. His partner clears their throat.

“Hi…” they say, holding out their hand yet again. Like with the forest spirit, the gesture is ignored, even sneered at. “Okay… Look, I only know the bare basics of what happened between you all, but I assure you, we have only the best interest of the world in mind.”

Many of the citizens nod in acknowledgment of the words, though a few of the children poking their ways through the crowd of adults squint in confusion and lean over to older children to ask them to translate. But even if most can understand their words, it does little to mollify the masses.

The first elder who spoke says, “We have much room in our hearts for forgiveness and hope. However, that can only happen when the person committing the wrongdoing is actually sorry for what they’ve done.” The lock eyes with Kozmotis. “We are a village of magic and learning—we have been since Ombric Shalazar himself molded Big Root and established this haven. And times have changed since that happened, even since he took his small trip to the cosmos when my grandparents were children. But we are not a village that so easily lets criminals walk free.”

“As you can see,” Kozmotis finally spits, holding up his shackled wrists. “I’m hardly a free man at the moment.”

The elder recoils a bit, but holds their ground and sniffs. “Again, North, Katherine, we hate to call your judgment into question—”

“As I hope you hate to call mine or The Man in the Moon’s into question.”

The ancient voice booms forth from the top step of Big Root, and the entire village swerves their heads around to face the source. Ombric Shalazar, the last living citizen of Atlantis and master wizard, looks over the entire gathering. For a moment, all of the humans are dead silent, and the last vestiges of natural light fade into darkness.

Three sharp claps resound through the area, and instantly all manner of lights blink on. Across every rooftop, winding through every branch of the tree, lining the snowy pathways, tiny globules of magical light pierce through the darkness and illuminate the area. His partner gasps and spins in place, taking in as much of the sights as they can in one go. Multiple glimmers reflect off of their wide eyes, and he relaxes to watch them. It’s only when they start to rush off that he grabs them.

“Don’t move too far,” he says, nodding to the crowd still surrounding them. Their attention is still on the wizard for the most part, but a few glance between Ombric and them, watching as much as they can. His partner deflates, and he chuckles and kisses their temple. “I’m sure North or Ms. Goose will give you a tour once this all cools down.”

They nod and go on gazing around in awe as a conversation near the tree grows more and more heated. Though, Kozmotis has to admit that while he’s seen Santoff Claussen at night before, it was always under the pressure of trying to mess with it. He’s not out of danger now, but it’s nice to be able to look around it for a bit, taking the few sights and sounds he can.

Like the children in his peripheral vision edging closer and closer to them now that their parents are distracted.

He pretends not to notice until he hears one of them whisper, “But that’s definitely the Boogeyman, right? He looks like… He looks like how people describe Kozmotis.”

“People don’t have to tell the truth on the Internet,” another child says. “They can just make up whatever stories they want about whatever they want.”

 _So the call of technology has managed to reach even this little enclave,_ Kozmotis thinks. He glances around one more time. _Though seemingly, it must exist in a magical form, as I see no towers here._

“If the elders say he’s the Boogeyman, then he might be!”

“I can be both,” he finally responds. Half the gaggle of children gasp and rush off, tripping over their own or other’s feet. Half of the remainder simply freeze up, gaping like fish. The fraction of them, though, look at him curiously.

“How can you be both?”

“I used to be…” He licks his lips. “I _used_ to be Pitch Black. However, recently, I’ve found myself going by an older name: Kozmotis.”

“So, are you good or evil?”

“I am—” He stutters for a second. “I’m doing my best.”

“Kozmotis!”

North calls from the doorway of Big Root. He waves, and the crowd has parted enough to let Kozmotis, his partner, and Kidra pass. They make their way to the looming tree, his partner twisting to see as much of the village as possible before entering. Once again, Kozmotis keeps his eyes forward, avoiding looking at any of the villagers. For he first time since he lost his powers, he’s happy he can’t innately sense others’ negative emotions. He doesn’t need that kind of pressure, the reminder of the dark turns his life took. If he really wants to know, he’ll reach out with a tether, but he doesn’t think anything productive would come of that.

As they all reach the threshold, he takes a chance. Glancing back down, the children once again sneak through their parents’ knees and watch him, less warily and more curiously. He hopes, at least. Perhaps they’ll be able to convince their parents he’s not a threat to them. He snorts at the idea.

 _Now_ there’s _some wishful thinking._

“And what could a little bit of wishful thinking possibly lead to?”

A moonbeam swirls around his head for a moment, giggling as soon as the faint whisper dissipates into the night. It races towards the horizon as the moon rises above the distant treetops, disappearing into its full, glowing face.

Big Root’s door closes with a deafening click.


	87. The Long Debriefing

Ombric snaps his fingers, simultaneously lighting the house and activating some sort of enchanted dusters. They swipe over every imaginable surface to clean after remaining stagnant for a century. Ombric continues to roam from room to room, snapping his fingers or clicking his tongue in complex patterns to make his lab come back to life. Even the branches seem to stir, a creaking sounding off as the walls fluctuate slightly.

They’re safe from any potential antagonism now, so Kozmotis lets go of his partner. They follow their instincts and rush behind Ombric, mouth open in awe at everything. Ms. Goose laughs quietly and follows them, touching their elbow and gesturing for them to follow her.

North lets out a loud sigh and draws a chair up. Kozmotis does a double-take and realizes he might’ve literally drawn it and its sudden companion from the ether. Either way, he takes North’s invitation to sit down. Kidra stands at the hallway for a moment before doubling back and curling around Kozmotis’ chair. The Cossack closes his eyes, leans back, and inhales deeply.

“It is good to be back,” he says, stretching.

“I can only imagine.” Kozmotis glances around the small area. “That robot of yours isn’t still around, is it?”

“Djinni? Oh, I imagine so. If it has not seen much use by townsfolk, then might need some cleaning and de-rusting.”

A small table appears between them, filling itself with a kettle that brings itself to a boil instantly. After it whistles for three solid seconds, it tips over to the teacup that apparates in front of North, and then moves around the table to the rest of the cups before serving Kozmotis.

North takes a sip. “Why do you ask? Planning on finally betraying us?”

Kozmotis opens his mouth to object, but sees that playful twinkle in his eyes as they meet his over the rim of the cup. He takes a sip of his own cup, and in return says, “Well, of course! Surely you knew it was only a matter of time.”

“Well, hurry so I can collect on bet. Two more days and I’d owe Bunny.”

“Did I say something? I meant could I possibly see the robot I once used for nefarious purposes in exactly two days. For purely nostalgic reason, I assure you.”

North flicks a half-eaten cookie at him, but he bats it away with a well-timed silver thread. It sails wide from his head, landing against something on the other side of the room. That something clears his throat pointedly.

“Children.” Ombric levitates the cookie and watches them. They point at each other. The wizard discards the food and laughs. “It’s wonderful to see you again, Nicholas.”

*************

You will yourself not to touch anything, despite how much you simply _need_ to know what everything is. It’s difficult, walking through the chaotic, glimmering hallways lined with all sorts of odds, ends, and components. There’s a distinct tremor in their air around here, one you’re slowly getting better at recognizing as a magical hum. Granted, this one is, how to describe it… It feels more constructed than natural, like there’s some behind-the-scenes manipulation going on rather than a regular flow of impossibility.

“Father’s first, and most basic magic spell,” Katherine says, running her fingers over the knots and whorls in the wood grain. “‘I believe.’”

“I do too,” you reply. She turns around, eyebrow raised as she smiles. You shrug. “It’s a weird habit to get into, but I’m getting better at it.”

“I’d hope after seventy-five years of this life, you’d be a little bit past the ‘getting used to it’ stage.”

“Oh, lay off, I’m a very stubborn scientist!”

She giggles and reaches out for you wrist. You let her grab it, and she gently leads you to a cozy bedroom, decked out in an assortment of reference posters and half-finished contraptions. Katherine heads over to a shiny quill pen hovering over a display stand. She runs her fingers over it and looks your way.

“My old room,” she says. “He kept it as I left it so many years ago.”

“Really?” You limp in and set yourself on the tidy bed, sighing in relief as you take a load off. “He didn’t turn it into another storage room?”

“Oh, he might eventually.” She sits beside you. Her smile is so genuine in here, a far cry from the constant concern and irritation from when you first arrived at the Pole. “But my father forgets just how many rooms he’s put into this house on a regular basis, let alone the fact that I moved out centuries ago.”

All at once, she’s an old soul radiating from an otherwise lost teenager. Your parental instincts take over, and you wrap an arm around her. The edges of her eyes glisten, but refuse to let loose the tears building up. You rest your cane against the wall and wrap her in a hug.

“It’s okay,” you say. “He back. And y’all have a lot of catching up to do, right?”

“Yeah…” She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “You know, he’s not my biological father.”

“Biology is the basic building blocks of life. Family is what you make it.”

Katherine looks at you curiously, but nods. “I guess so. Because he’s the only father I’ve ever known.”

“He’s lucky to have raised such a brave, caring daughter, then.” You ruminate on your next thought for a moment. “I never thanked you for instantly believing me when I said I was trying to get out of the deal, did I?”

She shakes her head.

“Then thank you. I know it hasn’t panned out like you would have preferred—and I’m not here to judge you on that—but thanks for being there, ready to back me up when I needed help.”

“I still am.” she replies, face turning serious. “I think you’re doing… all right with him. But if you ever need anything—to get out, to escape for three hours, to vent—you’re welcome at Ganderly.”

“Thank you.”

For a second, you worry you’ve ruined the atmosphere of an otherwise happy day. But then Katherine closes her eyes and sprawls out on the tiny twin bed, wrapping herself in the blankets and breathing in the dusty, but obviously familiar and comforting scent of her first home. Re-energized, she shoots up again and drags you through several other corridors of magical trinkets, oddball sights, and finally to a small library you instantly know is the magical, wizardly source of Ombric’s knowledge.

“Dig in,” she says as you launch yourself at the shelves.

*************

Ombric nibbles a cookie over the next hour or so as he listens to North tell the story of how Pitchiner became Pitch became Kozmotis. Kozmotis himself interjects to clarify a few points, here and there, but for the most part leaves the explanation to North. Ombric purses his lips and nods, furrowing his brow every now and then, usually at the worst parts of the story. Kozmotis wishes he could smooth the narrative over, but the wizard has probably spent too much time speaking with The Man in the Moon to let a more flattering version of the tale slip in.

Kozmotis flicks his eyes to the nearest window, watching the full moon grin down through the slip of glass. No moonbeams prancing outside of it, however, though a few silhouettes of townsfolk make themselves known. He glances down the hallway, wondering where his partner has gone, wondering if Ms. Goose is giving them a thorough tour. He hopes so; this is probably the best place they’ll get a magical education to their liking. For all his knowledge, North isn’t the best teacher for his partner. Too focused on magic and its uses rather than the confusing theory behind it.

“So,” Ombric says, having let the story of the last year work its way into his head and settle there. “Pi—Kozmotis? You have… changed.”

“Yes,” he replies. “I like to think for the better, on top of everything.”

“From what I’ve seen the past few months from the moon, I’m forced to agree.” Ombric blinks and cringes. “I hate admitting it, but the Guardians remain truthful in their assessment.”

Kozmotis grinds his teeth and open his mouth to retort, but North beats him to it.

“Indeed, we do. Trust me, I was surprised as well. I had prepared to kill him last January when we tracked him down.” He glances to the moon. “But others had plans, it seems.”

Ombric follows his gaze. “Yes. Manny has been watching. Sending a few moonbeam messengers here and there, as well. He is…” The old man struggles over the right words. “He is conflicted at this turn of events, I should say. After all, it’s not every day your godfather-turned-evil pivots yet again.”

“It’s not everyday a godfather is overtaken by shadows and made to believe he’s the physical manifestation of fear, either,” Kozmotis mumbles. Ombric blinks.

“As I hope others have said before me, that fact of fate explains only so much.” He leans in. “However, it does not excuse your terrorizing my daughter, in any respect.”

If their positions had been reversed… If Kozmotis had been the ancient wizard and Ombric had been the interstellar tyrant… His recovered memories the time spent with Seraphina bubble to the surface, as do all the promises he made her. If it had been him watching helplessly as the shadows manhandled her—

Actually, he knows firsthand how heavy that weighs on the mind.

“I know,” he says. “And that rift may never heal in the next thousand years. But rest assured, I am honored that she has given me several chances to prove her, and so many others, wrong.”

Ombric merely raises his brow higher than Kozmotis thought it could go on his tiny forehead. But, he sighs, closes his eyes, and busies himself to pat down his layers of robes, fishing through various pockets that must be larger on the inside with what he keeps pulling from them. As Ombric is occupied, a white flash waves at the edge of his vision. He turns to see a napkin settle over his cup and North returning back to his own thoughtful posture. Kozmotis blinks, and a tear breaks free to stain the white tablecloth.

“Thanks,” he whispers, cleaning himself up as the wizard straightens himself out.

“Of course,” North replies, just as faint.

For the next few minutes, the only sounds are distant clicks and clanks as the tree finishes reawakening and cleaning itself up.

“So,” Ombric finally continues, bringing out a small, silver-gold disk from the depths of his person. The dishware slides out of the way, creating a space to put it down. “I suppose now would be as good a time as ever to get to the point of this meeting and my return.”

He leans over and taps the disk. He touches it, and several, swirling blobs of light lift from the disk in a spiraling line. One of the blobs grows in diameter, settling into the center of the circle and rising a bit higher than the rest. It grows to encompass the whole table and then some, and a sense of peace washes over him. The magic inside becomes a scrying feed, though the image is blurry, warped, and desauturated. Ombric purses his lips and taps the orb. The colors brighten a bit, but only for a moment before reverting more washed-out tones.

But the feed resolves into a clearer image. Small wisps curl out from the center of the light, emitting small, giggle-like whispers as they fly around. Koz stiffens in his seat, leaning away from a few of the wisps that venture close to him. A sweat breaks out along his hairline, and his stomach turns. He shakes, and he can hear his shallow, rapid breathing like static in his own ears.

“Can you hear me, old friend?” Ombric calls through the scry. “The reception was already going to be hazy, but I want to be sure the magic can reach through the monster.”

“Indeed it can, Ombric Shalazar.”

The voice is soft and bouncy, spoken with a smile. It all at once fills the entire parlor, but is too quiet to rattle the furniture and walls. A round face. A slight smile. A glow similar to the round object hovering in the sky just outside. The visage of The Man In The Moon forms right in front of their eyes.

“Greetings.” His gaze roams from person to person, finally landing on Kozmotis. “And welcome back.”

*************

You manage to find a few books you can read. They’re written like Shakespearean English, so it’s still difficult to make your way through them.

“Sorry about this,” Katherine says, pulling a few more you can read. “He only updates the translations every few hundred years, and sometimes misses a whole language in the evolutionary line.” She stacks the tomes next to you. “I promise we’ll get you started on some language studies as soon as this whole… debacle slows down.”

You skim through the passage in front of you, looking for relevant information on the moon. This book’s title is “The Collected Pamflets of Esau Dayvidsen: Filosofies on the Cosmos,” and so far the text consists of a bunch of sonnets to the stars. You can’t help but think that Arden would have enjoyed poring through them, dissecting the bits until you had a better appreciation for what was seconds ago fancy gibberish. They’d done that a few times, including the one where you’d actually gone to Shakespeare’s home for a vacation.

> The empty moon ensnares and calls my heart,  
>  But darkness draws the caller out to beg  
>  “I see not thine intent from my rampart,  
>  Nor shall I strike a deal to lie, renege  
>  That promise made in my unholy birth  
>  Which seals my form and hides my source beneath.”  
>  Much longer still I linger on this earth  
>  Til once again the blinded moon is wreathed  
>  By silver traced around her secret core.  
>  “Art thou new to heaven’s pantheon?  
>  A mirror to the man who came before?  
>  Surely not as old as Babylon.”  
>  As new-lived shadow watches from on high,  
>  She asks the stars surrounding her, “Am I?”

You stare at the poem for a little longer than you normally would, trying to recreate it as if Arden’s the one reciting it. They always drew out the dialogue, had lines running right into other lines to create a continuous stream of language. But it ends up hurting too much after a bit, and you move on to the passage below to see if this had anything new to say about the moon.

Katherine leans over your shoulder. You instinctively hunch a bit. “Brushing up on your moon lore before meeting the Man himself?”

“Actually, I want to see if any ancient person had ever talked to Selene before I did. Or if there are any legends or rumors about someone like me, who was taken in by Selene.” You chew on the inside of your lip for a second. “She appeared to me a few days ago. At the Pole.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Turns out she has some sort of form. It looks a lot like Kidra, in fact.”

You describe your meeting with Selene, from her terrifying form to her admission that she’d created the monsters that helped kill you to her odd statement about how she was drawn to the beast in the atmosphere. At that, Katherine knits her brows together and starts tugging on her hair, pacing the floor in front of you.

“What does that mean?”

“I wish I knew. It’s infuriatingly hard to get a straight answer from her. But she seemed really unsure about it.”

“And of course we’re at the full moon now…” She stopped in the middle of the floor. “Do you think Manny might know something?”

“I hope so. When do we meet with him?”

“Well, from the conversation I overheard a few minutes ago, he’s already calling and speaking to your partner.”

You drop the book and try to hoist yourself up as quickly as possible, but the cane slips from your fingers and crashes to the floor. You still make an attempt to get up without help, but all you get for your troubles is swimming vision. Katherine wraps her arms around you to keep you steady, propping the cane into your hand when she can finally reach for it.

“Woah, woah! Take it easy.”

“I wanted to be there when they started that. To be there for him.” You start to shuffle your way to the door, but she pulls you back.

“He’ll be fine. North is one-hundred percent on his side, and Manny trusts North. So your boyfriend isn’t going to be smited down.” She opens her mouth to add something, but thinks better of it. “When he’s ready to talk with all of us, my father or North will call us.

“In the meantime, I guess we can start looking into Selene herself. See if that gets us anywhere near an answer.”

“Okay,” you reply, sitting back down. You grab up the book again and start making your way through the main passage. Katherine waves her hand, summoning a stack of much older, mustier books, none of which are in a language you recognize.

 _Don’t worry, Selene,_ you try to mentally send out to her. _We’re looking into this. Just hold out a bit longer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i spent an hour on that sonnet :3


	88. In the Bright Moonlight

The Man In the Moon waits for everyone to settle down in their seats.

 _He looks just like his father…_ Kozmotis thinks. He brings his hand to cover his mouth, even more unable to find the peace the Man In The Moon seemingly hopes for him to find in the moment. Instead, the Tsar Lunar heir closes his eyes for a moment before speaking.

“It has been some time since I’ve spoken with you all like this. I watched you prevail over Pitch Black’s return fifty years ago, but we have not met face to face in ages longer.” He smiles. “It is wonderful to catch up with you, North.”

“It is honor to have audience with you, too,” North replies. “Apologies that rest of team cannot be here for moment. Work is getting in way for some. But I can call Katherine from other room if—”

“I would prefer to catch up as just us for now. Once we have settled a few… things… the others can join us. Moreover, Sanderson and I speak through dreams more often than not, so he will understand what passes between us all here. In the meantime…” The round face swivels back around. “Kozmotis.”

Kozmotis reluctantly meets his eyes, trying to send forth a message of ten thousand apologies that could only hope to begin covering all the wrongs he’s committed against him.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” The Man In The Moon whispers. “To meet the you whom my parents trusted so much.”

“I…” He clears his throat. “I’m afraid to tell you that I am still not that man. Even if I recover all of my memories of the Golden Age, I can never go back to being Pitchiner. Not after all I’ve done. Especially to you. For everything I have done, I am eternally sorry.”

The Man gives him a piteous look, blinking rapidly. He sighs and takes a moment to rub his eyes.

“It is a complicated emotion for me as well, Kozmotis,” he finally replies. “While it could be said that you took so much from me, I never was able to grow up with my parents in order to miss them as more than abstract concepts of my past. And it seems pointless to me to continue to mourn what may have been after all these years.

“That doesn’t stop me from wondering occasionally, however,” he continues. “If anything, it hurt more seeing the adult who was supposed to take care of me callously endanger the humans and my friends over and over again. To the point I almost lost faith that you were indeed the person my parents had thought you were.

“And yet, here we are. Centuries later, and you’ve come so far so quickly.”

“Not quickly enough…”

“No. No, not quick enough to prevent many tragedies. But your efforts now are noted and appreciated, if not by everyone, then by enough to still encourage you down this path.”

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

“Not at the moment, no.” The Man’s tone sharpens in an instant, making Kozmotis sit still in his seat. North and Ombric shift in their seats, trying to hide small grunts of surprise. The Man himself looks shocked at his own words, but then his look resolves into determination. “That came out harsher than I meant it to, but I stand by that. But I hope, in the future, you will deserve my forgiveness, and thus _will_ deserve to call yourself my godfather once again.”

A year ago, Pitch Black would have sneered at the remark, the concept of the Man in the Moon caring even the least bit. Six months ago, Kozmotis would have shrugged neutrally, brushing off the notion as not worth caring about; the past is the past. Now, though, he feels obligated to correct as much as he can. A thought flickers across his mind; the rabbit might still know something about the timelines and how to go back, though from the conversation he’d overheard, he doesn’t seem to eager to try. Going to him is a lost cause, anyway.

The Man clears his throat. “Speaking of watching over children, tell me more about this new power you’ve developed, as well as the… imaginary friendships you’ve been cultivating.”

Kozmotis starts giving a stark, sterile report, naming names and doling out short briefs. But as the continues to talk, as the Man continues to listen, the words just flow. Until he’s speaking animatedly, engaging with North and Ombric in tales of exploits and adventures. Several minutes later, as he slows down, he notices that all three of them are watching him with odd expressions. North tries to hide it behind a cup, but Ombric and the Man simply smile.

He shuts up, scrunching down in his seat. After a few moments, the Man speaks again.

“It’s wonderful to hear that your efforts are going well, and moreover, are fulfilling for you. I’ve long thought the children needed someone like Jack Frost, someone who can interact with them face to face. Unfortunately, he’s so delicate beyond latitude forty. And even moreso at the moment with his home overtaken.”

“Ah, yes,” Ombric says, dragging out another, smaller disk. “Perhaps now is the time to call the others and work out a viable strategy for the other spires, Burgess, and the monster.”

“I suppose so,” he agrees.

North stands and wanders deeper into the tree, Kidra jumping up from their nap and trotting after him. As he goes, Ombric fiddles with the disk. Several more orbs pop out of it, and they form a circle about six inches from the tabletop. The cores of each orb darken slightly, and then writhe. Kozmotis looks closer as the scrying image of a small town’s quiet autumn streets fades into view. The humans bustle down the streets, barely looking at each other or at the world around them.

The scry swerves, flying into a nearby alley. Despite the noontime light, the narrow through-way is dark. The walls loom and the grime thickens. All of them lean in, and then jump in their seats as something moves at the edges of the feed. Before anyone can say, “Is that…?” a fearling’s claw slashes over the image, there’s a short whine, silence, and then the globule blinks out. Ombric sighs.

“This is Burgess, as you no doubt can see.”

 _Ah…_ he says to himself, realizing. _Oh, I see…_

Ombric raises his finger, and another ball of light rises up and picks up back at the original location. This time, it swoops up and over the streets the opposite direction. On the way, it passes a schoolyard, and he briefly glimpses a pack of young students running around a track. One of the kids—red, sweaty, and from their speed, breathing heavily—falls behind the rest, and the teacher pokes into view. There’s no sound, but they can see the teacher yelling at the child, who tries to hold back tears.

A string tugs within Kozmotis, sending a shiver of lonely desperation up his spine. Before he can say anything, however, the feed heads onward until it passes into a nearby forest. He sits up, flicking his eyes all around.

“There should be a small lake nearby…” he says, then glances to Ombric. “That’s where the spire should be.”

The wizard merely raises an eyebrow in reply, and the feed shows the ground and trees becoming smaller and smaller as the scrying orb rises into the air. After scanning a short bit, there’s a flash and the next thing visible is a covering of autumn colors decorating sparse trees, and a moving dark patch in the center.

The feed slips closer to the ground, but when it reaches even with the treetops, another patch of darkness swipes at it. It dodges in time, but five more tendrils, boiling in the direct sunlight, strike out. They swipe and thrash at it, but rising too much higher exposes them to the sun, and the tendrils evaporate before they can get too close. Meanwhile, in the center of the dully reflective pond, a speck of violet glimmers up from the bottom.

“So they weren’t necessarily lying to me that day.” Kozmotis hisses. It’s one thing to suspect, it’s another to have confirmation. “Right where it always was…”

*************

By the time North pushes through the door, the library is half-wrecked with evidence of multiple dead ends He gestures to you and Katherine.

“Time to meet Manny.”

You file back to the parlor, setting yourself down on a chair next to Koz. Some sort of magic passes over your seats, and they merge into a bench. Koz leans into you, tucking his arm between your back and jacket and sighing at the warmth. You nuzzle into the crook of his neck and shoulder, making his cough and shift. When you pull back a little, he’s gone all flushed. He clears his throat, a small smile on his face as he nudges a teacup your way.

“You okay? I wanted to be here when you saw him again, but it was too late,” you whisper.

“I’m… as all right as I could be, given the circumstances. Thank you.”

“So you are the alchemist from the forest.” You glance up at hearing Manny’s voice. There he is, The Man in the Moon. The most elusive fairy tale figure you’ve never been able to see until now. But at his soft smile, you relax. It’s like looking up at the moon itself, like the beacon of a lighthouse letting you know you’re not alone.

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“I was told you couldn’t see me.” The Man winks. “I’ve also been told that you answer to a different moon-dweller.”

“Yes,” you reply. “To Selene.”

He leans forward, growing huge in the image. “I’ve been puzzling over that ever since I heard about it, as I have lived up here among the lunar seas and explored this satellite time and time again for centuries. Yet, I know of no entity named ‘Selene.’”

That makes some bit of sense with everything else you’ve experienced. After all, Koz and the others hadn’t known about her until they met you, and you’re not sure all of them actually believe in her existence. Fair, if perhaps hypocritical and ironic, but fair. The cogs of your mind start whirring again, however, as the implications stack up.

“So,” you start. “So you’d just never found Selene in your travels?”

He considers it. “No. I have scoured both sides of the moon many times, though I stay on the light side most frequently. In none of my travels—nor in any of my companions’ up here—have we come across this ‘Selene’ you speak of.”

“She _is_ real!” you assure him.

“Oh, I believe you.” He frowns. “But I like to think I have a healthy skepticism about her. Can you explain more of her to me?”

You look around at everyone. Koz and Ombric lean in, ready to hear more. Katherine and North keep glancing over, but are trying not to look too eager.

“Well… She’s one of the first spirits I ever came into contact with—as an adult anyway.” You glance around. “I’m pretty sure I noticed one or two odd things when I was a naive kid.”

“You mean when you more readily believed,” he says.

“Yeah. Anyway, she’s blind, except that she can see once the new moon rises in the sky. And she can see better the more the moon is dark. I’ve mostly known about her from her speaking to me all these years. She’s a little odd, though. Kind of aloof and detached.

“Not too long ago, she told me that she had no destiny in mind for me when she gave me my powers and afterlife. She’s implied she just… handed me some powers and sent me out into the world to watch what I’d do.”

“Not unlike yourself, it seems,” Ombric notes, stroking his beard. “And you have been studying the spires and what they’re made of?”

You nod, summoning a few bottles from your quiver. You lay them out: Antarctica, Uluru, and Thera shards; the triple Source; and individual Sources. Ombric’s eyes immediately widen as he takes in the glowing swirls of light green, orange-yellow, and icy blue. He reaches out, but pauses with his hand halfway there. He looks up at you, flexing his fingers, and only once you nod does he grab eagerly for the one nearest to him, raising it up to his face to look at it.

“The Sources themselves…” He studies it for a second. “Do you happen to have your notes here?”

“Of course.” You drag out the haphazard notebook you’ve been keeping, shuffling a few things around to keep the loose leafs of paper between the covers. He sets it down on the table and carefully lays out everything bit by bit. He runs his fingers over the manic scribblings, humming every so often.

“Very thorough,” he says. Then he points to another paper and pauses, running a finger over the text. He holds it up to his face for a moment. “Can you really catalyze _any_ magics together?”

“Patience, Ombric,” Manny says. He indicates for you to continue.

“I guess it is a lot like a science experiment, now that you say it,” you reply. “But she means me no harm!”

“I can vouch for her benevolence,” Koz says. “She has spoken to me, as well over the last half a year or so.”

“What did she ask of you?”

“She’s merely curious with the directions I take my life, it seems.”

You take a deep breath. “As a matter of fact, sir, she appeared to me only a few days ago at the Pole.”

As you recount the odd meeting, your friends and partner try their best to follow. And when you get to the part where she admitted to being drawn toward the eldritch shadow, the tension only thickens. North starts pacing, and Katherine runs off, returning with a small stack of books she’d been going through earlier. She piles them onto her father’s lap, and he nearly loses a grip on a few of them, just managing to save them from toppling into the teacups. Manny listens patiently to the short story, and when you finish, he closes his eyes for a moment, stroking his chin.

He says, “A curious development. I trust a bit of research will help clear this up.”

“On it,” Katherine says, waving her hand and making the dishes disappear. In their place, she sets down three open tomes. “But it’ll take a bit to sniff out the right trail.”

“All right. In the meantime…” Another one of the light balls floats up at his gesture, flickering back to the spire in India. “What shall we do about this?”

“I was actually thinking about something different lately.” Koz clears his throat, drawing out his own notebook, spine nearly bursting at the packed-in maps and scribblings. “Something that may be able to give us a leg up on the shadows if we’re able to pull this off.”

The table widens to accommodate not just the tomes and communication disk, but the numerous maps and copies of your notes he made to evaluate as he’s puzzled over the spire approach.

“This most recent idea came to me the last time I was at the Palace for therapy,” he says.

“Therapy…” The Man whispers it a little too loud, and he winces as he catches Koz staring at him, a flush taking over his face.

“We’ve been replacing the teeth on a more leisurely schedule than we had evacuated them, so we’re nearly three-quarters of the way done. I’ve been going over to keep watch on the spire after every session, and the more teeth come back in, the more sinister the air grows. I’ve little doubt that the spire is, indeed, gaining power not just from the collection of local belief, but due to the concentration of it at the Palace.”

“Then we must reverse tooth replacement!” North says. He drags out a communications orb and twists a few things on it. Kozmotis rushes over and claps his hands down, stopping North from finishing the call.

“One, I don’t think Toothiana will allow us to take the teeth again. She hated it the first time, and she’s still sour about the experience. If you insist, go right ahead, but I don’t doubt that she will take off one of your hands in the process, blindness be damned.

“Two, scattering the teeth again will only delay this process, and moreover, possibly encourage the shadows to speed up any possible plans of placing spires near any of your other bases.

“Three, I have a better idea: let’s take it for ourselves.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so fun fact im a hardcore pantser (writes by the seat of my pants aka outlines physically hurt me). but i figured id try to make an outline this time bc i am desperate to nail this ending both for my sake and yall's. so i vaguely outlined the first 5 chapters and yeezus that was some of the hardest writing to get out. so many rewrites of entire chapters, thousands of words tossed out and reinstated.
> 
> the moral of the story is, try different pre-writing styles and see what works for you, but dont force yourself to abide by just one bc it may be whats holding your writing back. feel lost in a mire of ideas after writing one "The" on impulse? tie that sucker into an outline. get nauseous or bored after jotting down a few plot points? attack the blank word doc babeyy.


	89. Am Not Become Death

_“WHAT?!”_

The reaction from the rest of the Guardians is identical to the ones a few days earlier when he first suggested the idea in front of the Man in the Moon. Koz nods and rolls his eyes, scanning across each and every person where they’re situated around the small parlor of Big Root.

“The spires collect, hold, and presumably discharge belief. Why not ensure that we have enough power to fight the shadows by using their own means against them?”

“Because I don’t want a dark spire near my home any longer than it needs to be!” Toothiana yells. She shoots straight up from her chair, and only the attentive mini-fairies and Jack’s quickness keep her from bashing her head against the lowest rafters. At the same time, Ombric quickly flicks his hand to move the rafter out of the way.

“Besides that, we’re _Guardians.”_ The rabbit drawls the final word slowly. “We don’t manipulate the shadows or use darkness to win fights.”

 _Check and check._ Kozmotis ticks off the list in his head. As predicted, the two most likely to object did so, in exactly the same ways he thought they would once they finally caught up to Santoff Claussen.

To be fair, the Man in the Moon had similar reservations.

“I’ve been informed you haven’t lost your keen tactical mind, Kozmotis,” he said. “But usually the Guardians aim to destroy the shadows where they spread fear, not welcome it as a possible advantage.”

“I have no dubious motivations,” he assured the Man. “Only a desire to end this and enjoy some peace. And I mean that! For once, I’d like to be able to relish the tranquility of boredom rather than continuously scrabble to keep hold of any ground I have.”

The Man in the Moon looked at him with another piteous, solemn expression, and Kozmotis almost snapped at him to make him stop or at least become angry with him.

“And I think you deserve that rest.”

He folded his arms, sighing and tilting his head back. The light changed over him and settled in the faint crows feet at the corners of his eyes. He rolled his shoulders back and cleared his throat. When he took stock of the parlor after a moment, Kozmotis once again marveled at the harmonic blend of Tsar and Tsarina staring down at him.

“We will speak again. Soon. Nightlight and the moonbeams will keep me appraised of your plans and movements in the meantime. Take the spire, convert it to useful belief for us, and please,” he said, looking so old and so tired. “Please don’t waver again.”

Kozmotis rolls his eyes where the rabbit can see him and addresses Toothiana.

“I understand your hesitation, but since that spire is neither feeding off of a Source nor in a town overtaken by hordes of shadows, it’s the best one to try and take.” He looks to his partner. “Have you been able to rid the shards of their darkness?”

They drag out four petri dishes of dark residue and toss them onto the table before sinking down until their chin rests on the tabletop.

“Technically? The process disintegrated most of the shards and released the Source energy trapped inside, just like it’s done before.”

The rabbit reaches over and shakes one of the dishes. He sniffs it, wrinkling his nose. “I know I heard ‘most of the shards’ in there. So, how many didn’t disintegrate?”

“One.”

*************

You pull the only success out with a flourish. At first, it looks the same as the others, just with less residue, but as they all look closer, a sliver of clear crystal takes form as it sits at the bottom, surrounded by the black, powdery substance. You turn the container a bit, and beams of green, orange, and blue toss about as if from a prism.

“It seems possible to take the shadows out, and as far as I can tell, that’s the closest you’ll get to pure, distilled, solid Belief.”

“But?” Bunny says.

 _Easy, Koz,_ you think as you feel him go rigid next to you.

“But that took a lot of energy and resources for me to do. I’m all out of Source samples now. Not to mention it’s still a little unstable.” You point, and though it takes a minute, the clear crystal rattles where it sits. A dark shell covers it for a moment before it peels and flakes away. “Hypothetically, I can make a stable version, but I need more supplies.”

“Hypothetically,” Bunny once again interrupts, “can’t you use this on that girl? Rina?”

You lean back in your chair, pinning Koz between it and a wooden column before he can take a swipe. A bundle of silver starts up in your peripherals, so you reach back, grab his wrists, and pull him down so that he’s holding you, unable to move. He takes a familiar sharp inhale of excitement, chasing it with a cough to cover up the anticipation. You refuse to let go of him as you answer.

“Look, I know my sample size is ridiculously small, but so far we have an eighty-percent disintegration rate.”

“The amplified Sources, then.”

You all turn in shock as Toothiana hovers her way to the front of the crowd. She reaches out and feels for a column, grasping on as soon as she touches it. Of all people to make that suggestion… If you were gonna put money down, you’d’ve put it on Bunny, but even he’d stopped talking about it so eagerly after he saw what happened to Tooth. She blinks for a moment, then sighs.

“Well, don’t all cheer at once. What’s wrong?”

“Tooth…” North stutters. “Tooth, we do not want repeat of Easter. Of what happened to you.”

“As much of an inconvenience as this is, I got results, didn’t I? And it’s not that hard being blind.” She waves her hand in front of her face. Then pauses. She squints, blinks, and moves her hand closer. “Hm… Besides, in five years or so, I think I’ll be back to my old self.”

“That’s still no reason to snort Sources!” you yell. Haven’t you made yourself perfectly clear? “Yeah, it enhances everything, but there’s such a dramatic cost that you have to ask if it’s really worth it!”

“It is!” Toothiana rises above them again. “Anything to stop this madness is worth it! Better than dragging the back and forth out over years or decades or centuries with only superficial victories!”

After another moment of silence, she sinks back down, her fairies cautiously fluttering to her shoulders.

“Speaking as the other person here who’s used the Sources to fight my way back from the bottom,” you say, reaching out and putting your hand over hers. “I understand the rush. I understand how powerful you can get. But it’s too temporary and too overwhelming and the Sources are too fragile to keep messing with in big doses. I don’t want any of y’all to die or get consumed by that. I don’t want to over-collect from one of the Sources and fuck up the world in the name of trying to save it.”

“I’d sacrifice everything to make things right.”

Even as you open your mouth and form the words, you know how low a blow this is: “The Sisters of Flight aren’t going to come back just because we win the day.”

“I know!” Her feathers ruffle in waves, and the edges of her eyes get watery. Jack and North flank her, hovering their hands, ready to catch her before she blows up. “But there has to be _something_ we can use to give us the edge we desperately need that’s not too dangerous. _Something_ that will keep us going to prevent so much more corruption and death.”

But you just shake your head.

She growls, “Use your damn words.”

“No.”

Kozmotis holds on to you, carding his fingers through your hair as you shake, the words and praises of so many Kinetics & Chem departmental meetings mushing together in a series of awful memories. Looking down, you see that your magic has flickered on, and it’s drawing some of the feathers at Tooth’s wrists its way. Letting go makes the worst of the memories stop, and you catch your breath little by little.

“I can’t do that again,” you repeat. “There’s another way.”

Toothiana zooms into the air, smacking her hands across the beams and rafters as she shows herself out of the house, fairies, Jack, and Sandy in pursuit.

“Perhaps is time for break, yeah?” North pats your shoulder, where he can reach through Koz’s hold. “We reconvene in few hours? Enough time for me to go back to Pole for bit to check on Christmas.” He looks across the way. “Could use your help, Bunny.”

You nod and lay your head back down on the table, listening to the teleportation warp sound appear and vanish, Koz at your side.

*************

Kozmotis lets his partner sulk for a few minutes, and then he drags them from their chair to force them on a walk around the town. Neither of them have been outside much since they got here, and a small tour around this whimsy sink should distract them enough to get back into their groove before the Guardians return for round two.

“Come on.” He prods at them, making them jerk when he hits a ticklish spot. “Let’s go somewhere and shake this out of our systems.”

“Ughhh!” They rise like a controlled ragdoll, exaggerating their reluctance a bit, especially as he keeps tickling them, and laughter smothers their groans.

“All right!” they say, shoving his hands away. “All right, babe, let’s go for walkies or whatever.”

Ombric catches them near the door and hands Kozmotis a paper. One glance at it, and he sees its a list of various mushrooms and grasses and house furnishings and whatnot.

“I’m not your chore boy, old man,” he says.

“No, but you’re a guest in this town under my protection.” He hauls open a gigantic globe, which spits a cloud of dust into his face. “So be a dear and pick up those ingredients from the apothecary and general store. It’s been a hundred or so years, I’m a little low on supplies, and the owls are hungry.”

“Owls?” His partner peeks around him.

Ms. Goose snorts as she passes by, not looking up as a small rift in the air opens and several large owls swoop and hoot out of whatever pocket dimension he’d packed them away in. In fact, one of them lands on Ms. Goose's shoulder, and she starts chatting to it in its soft hooting language. The others come to rest on their perches, glaring at Kozmotis. He nods to them, then to Ombric and taps the shopping list to his temple and winks.

“Let’s go, darling.”

Santoff Claussen certainly has modernized since he last tried to invade it. Naturally, this town could only modernize in its own unique way. Heating spells running in hearths far longer and more consistent than natural fires. Shiny cans and glimmering string connecting sounds and conversations to specified speaking horns. Hovercrafts and drones powered by scrying and animation spells. Projections similar to the mythosphere that children and adults interact with as games.

But, yes, there are signs of less magical technology overtaking parts of the younger generations. A phone or tablet here, physical game controllers and consoles there. One automobile slides into town with the mail, and then works its way back out again. Slow adoption does not mean never for them, nor does it mean an inevitable end to magic. It’s a little comforting to feel like he’s stepped back to a simpler time.

“So, the properties of certain woods and fibers are as all the witchy blogs I used to read said they were?”

His partner runs their fingers over a few, mostly straight dowels of ash and rowan on the counter. The apothecary owner nods politely to them and explains how the natural world, being not alive or sentient to reject anything, absorbs magics through its roots or has it cut into it through erosion.

Kozmotis wraps his arm around their waist. The shopkeeper darts their eyes up to him, and though a smile keeps turning their mouth up, the gesture flows out of their eyes, a warning replacing it. He remains there, glaring back and tightening his hold, hoping it reads more nonchalant than nervous.

Especially to the young boy trying to hide behind the counter. He’s not tall enough to see over the lip, so the fingertips hauling himself up to peek over give him away before his long, ribbon-tied braids, brown-black eyes, and freckles.

 _Shy,_ Kozmotis assesses at once. _Small, shy, and quiet._ He glances at their parent, who tries to subtly reach over and push the boy back out of sight. _Perhaps a little sheltered, too._

His partner holds out a list the old wizard had shoved to them before they managed to escape the house. The apothecarist skims it, sighs, and glances toward their back room.

“It’ll be a few minutes for me to gather these things. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” they reply. “Take your time.”

The shop owner scoots to the back, and only after a full minute passes by does Kozmotis lean farther over the counter to meet the boy’s curious gaze.

“Hello there,” he says.

“Meow!” The boy replies. He cocks his head and tugs on his braids before hissing at him. Kozmotis nods.

“I assure you, I am weird myself, but no threat. Not to humans, anyway. Not anymore.”

“Mow?”

“Oh, it’s a long story. Very exciting! Dangers and regrets and… so many apologies…”

He disappears below the counter and then drags himself up once again, depositing a small stuffed cat from his mouth to the countertop. He looks from it to Kozmotis, then bats it forward. It nearly falls off the edge, but he saves it and gently places it back near the boy, who has the end of one braid in his mouth.

“Mrow!”

He leans his head forward, touching his pretend paw-hand to his hair. Kozmotis smiles and pats his head, chuckling when the boy starts hacking out a gravelly, wheezy imitation of a purr. And then he yanks the hand away when he hears a strangled yelp at the other end of the counter.

His partner is already there, trying to assuage the apothecarist that nothing untoward was happening, trying to explain the once-Boogeyman’s new position as an Imaginary Friend. The boy’s parent isn’t having it, but they also aren’t lunging at him or firing off any number of spells his direction.

“Take your things and go,” they say, shoving a bag and the half-completed list into his partner’s arms.

As they head out, there’s one more loud meow and the patter of footsteps as the young boy tries to follow him out. This time, his parent scoops him up, ignores his hissing and struggling, and locks the door behind Kozmotis once they exit.

A small crowd of townsfolk watches from a distance. They go about their business as he and his partner realize they’re staring, but an air of unease and restlessness haunts them until they get back to Big Root and deposit the substances. It’s still too soon to reconvene the meeting, so he and his partner slink back to the small guest cottage adjacent to Big Root—technically still the same tree, but a new, closed-off wing—and stay in there for a bit.


	90. An Honest Position

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheers to reaching 300k of this journey, fam

Different window, different country, different snow. Same position of watching the frozen flakes fall from the comfort of a warm windowsill. The first and second day you were in the village, you’d thought maybe moving to a bit of functioning civilization filled with people who can see and interact with you might be nice. If snowbirds could live half the year in New England or Canada and party at your home beach in the other half, then maybe it can work the opposite way.

That potential got canned the instant you saw how understandably unforgiving the Santoff Claussen citizens were towards Koz. Neither they nor their grandparents were born the last time he harassed the town, but their unity, loyalty, and dedication to the history of the town is noted.

Something about snowfalls, you’ve noticed, is how much of a trance they put you in the longer you stare. Usually, you’re able to simply zone out and think of nothing, or let your mind simmer on whatever new project you’re working on. The same thing technically happens here, except that the simmer reduces to a sticky roux of your argument with Tooth.

“It doesn’t make sense,” you mutter. _She’s all aboard my redemption train until it hits a wall. But instead of trying to go around it, she’d rather bust her way through as if that won’t cause other problems._

Those memories of Kinetics & Chem also boil back up. Some of them weren’t even official meetings. Sometimes you and a bunch of your superiors and project colleagues got together to complain and dunk on the fatcats in government holding up production with their regulations and red tape. Regulations were for keeping restaurants clean and baby toys lead-free, not for innovation and keeping the country safe!

You cringe at how easily those thoughts came to you back then, despite how contradictory they are. It was so easy to blame anyone else for the holdup—especially the same entities who were funding your research and not-so-subtly asking you to make the “pesticide” just a little bit more concentrated, just a little bit more potent.

“Darling?”

Koz kisses your neck. You jump in surprise, the interruption derailing your thoughts, if not your anxiety. He chuckles and leans into you, watching the snow as well. A small dervish kicks up, rattling the window, and you shiver instinctively. He hums and pushes closer, pulling your collar a bit to trace his tongue from your collarbone to your ear.

You close your eyes and let out a small moan, stretching your neck out so he has better access. Since it’s the middle of the day, you grasp for the curtains to throw them closed.

(Being around people who work off of predictable day and night cycles has been interesting to say the least. It’s both a blessing in that you can predict when people are likely to see you, unlike the chaotic and perpetual schedules of the Guardians. But it’s a curse because you’ve gotten so used to blasting through days and nights like there’s no difference that you’ve forgotten what a risk feels like.

On the other hand, it now invokes a similar thrill to that one time in high school you snuck out of your home on a Friday night to go drinking and hook up with people in the woods.)

The curtains don’t quite close all the way, and as you lean back into Koz’s arms and crack open your eyes, you can see half his face in shadow, one eye glowing.

_Speaking of hooking up in the woods…_

“Hey,” you whisper. He lifts himself from your neck to plant a kiss on your lips.

“Hello yourself.” He scrunches his face up, a crooked smile stretching out. “Oh, what’re you thinking now?”

“I’m… kinda thinking about how we didn’t get to finish what we started that first time. Right before last Halloween.”

He looks into the distance for a second before blinking. A slight blush rises to the cheek in the light.

“To be fair, that was probably for the best. It wasn’t exactly an honest encounter.”

“No,” you say slowly, pulling away enough to close the curtains finally. You turn around, focusing only on those glowing eyes you learned to follow from place to place a year ago. “But the circumstances around the both of us are probably complicated enough to make up for it.”

“I am sorry.”

“I know.”

You kiss him and slide off the windowsill, dragging him deeper into the sparse cottage. You wave your other hand in front of you, feeling for one of the wide beams standing around the floor plan. Your hand connects with one, and you grab a hold, taking a few deep breaths from the tiredness still present from running around half the day.

Long, barely-visible arms snake around you. One goes to your hip and the other curls around the beam until your entire front pushes against it, your back pressing against his chest. At your peripheral vision, thin streaks of silver shoot out in multiple directions, fiddling with things across the cottage that only coax more darkness inside. It’s not an exact recreation of those nights in the woods, when you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face, but it’s the closest you’ve been since last fall.

He leans in, nuzzling into your neck again trailing his nose up the side of your head until his soft lips nibble at your earlobe. You groan again, louder, and he tightens the hand on your hip, pulling you until you can feel his slowly growing erection at your tailbone.

“How far do you want to go?” he asks, voice at a husky whisper.

“How about we finally make this position honest,” you say.

He makes a guttural sound and thrusts forward, at the same time raking his tongue and teeth over the shell of your ear. A soft gasp escapes your throat at the sudden movement, and he thrusts again, jerking forward as if he can’t help himself. But before he can thrust a third time and mark a rhythm, he takes a deep breath and tilts your head until you can just see his eyes.

“Don’t forget: barnacle.”

You giggle. The new safeword was another one grabbed on the spot the last time y’all got up to some involved shenanigans at the Pole. Koz, not wanting to think of his daughter’s locket every time you were together, had insisted on a brainstorming session not long after returning from Jordan’s. While you’d both agreed on it at the time, it’s hard not to laugh at such an inherently funny word.

At your giggle, Koz sighs and chuckles himself, resting his head against your shoulder.

“We can always change it again, darling, if it’s too much for you to get past.”

“Sorry! Sorry… I know, the mood and whatever but… _barnacle!”_ You nod, however, and manage to wrangle your giddiness back in. More seriously, you repeat, “Barnacle.”

“All right, then.”

He laces his fingers through yours and drags it around the beam, holding it there. He releases your hip to do the same with his other hand. There’s a flash, and a few moments later, he brings both of his hands back to you, lightly scratching long strokes up and down your back. You give a tug, and the strain of tethers against your wrists tells you all you need to know.

His hand returns to its position tight on your waist, and as he resumes thrusting, you can feel his other slide down your chest. He traces loops and circles around your breasts, skipping faster when you try to lean into his touch more. It’s all over top of your clothing, so the sensation is muffled. But not muffled completely, as he drags his fingernail to and fro, getting so near to one of your nipples, but skimming around it the instant you release a premature exhale of relief.

The sound you let out is so frustrated, so annoyed that Koz lays his hand over your stomach to hug you, whispering, “Shh…Lean into that anticipation. Let it build. Let it consume you so that the release is all the more exquisite.”

From there, he dips down, running his fingertips across the V of your legs. Not right down the middle where you’re wanting him, no of course not. But he continues to trace patterns there, up and down your thighs for what seems like ages, occasionally moving up to where your waistband meets your shirt. Fleeting touches of skin on skin. You huff, arms jerking against the bindings again, the movement making counterbalance to his carefully crafted thrusts.

He grunts. The hand at your waist slides up to cover your breast. Koz huffs next to your ear, right before squeezing hard and starting a kneading motion to complement the thrusts. He’s rock hard against your backside, what you can feel through these arduous layers of clothing. Are these even necessary anymore? How ancient does an immortal have to be before clothing becomes optional? His other hand finally digs under your waistband, palm fully cupping you.

“Koz!” you gasp.

He responds with your name, spoken against your neck as he kisses and licks and sucks. He flexes his hand between your legs, the heel grinding against your clit as he teases your outermost folds with his fingertips. He breathes heavily against the crook of your shoulder.

“So wet already. You can’t even see me, and this is how you react…” He clicks his tongue, then presses his lips against your ear. “Tell me honestly: do you want to see me as I ravish your body? Watch as much as you can through the dark? How deviant are you, really?”

You’re so wound up at the moment, so tense, that you feel another wave of slick leak out. Koz lets out a shaky exhale and rubs his fingers together so you can feel him down your pants. It’s not direct pressure, but he makes a sensational show out of slowly dipping one single finger into your hole and retrieving it, wet and warm. He spreads it all over his hand and returns to his previous hold: heel to clit in constant, barely moving pressure and fingertips hovering just outside of the folds, running along the rims.

“Oh… Oh this tells me so much, but how about you use your alluring voice to tell me?”

“Koz,” you squeak out. He opens his mouth, running his teeth just below your ear. “Koz please. Please let me see…”

“See what?”

“At least your eyes. At the very least those eyes.”

The tethers at your wrists fall away. Shifting bit by bit, you squirm around until your back becomes rigid against the beam, and your hands trail up his chest, resting over his elevated heartbeat. And those eyes, indeed. Burning, piercing, enthralling. Paralyzing as you meet them, though you can hear his breathing accelerate in kind as you make eye contact. His eyes become pained, then cloud over in lust as he skips a few breaths, taking in your gaze as much as you are his.

Oh, those eyes will haunt you. And you shiver from a thrill.

He captures your wrists above your head

You hook your leg around him.

He leans in, and you follow his eyes, trying to anticipate the rest of his face. He swerves at the last second, diving down to your neck and biting so hard your body stops feeling pain for a second. The longer he stays there, the more you can differentiate the waves of pleasure, pain, and stunned numbness as they circulate through each other. Meanwhile, your hands tense and twitch in his grasp, fighting the restraint on impulse because you can feel his hair brush against your cheek, and the contrast of sensations makes you want to grab out and hold him all the closer.

But his hand stays locked around your wrists, and the anticipation, the need grows stronger.

“Koz,” you eke out, voice keening at the highest register you can naturally go. You try to drag him closer with your leg. Your thigh and calf scream at the exertion, but finally his dick brushes close to your core

He lets go at that, panting against your neck, his cool breath the newest sensation among so many at once. And then his glowing eyes come back up where you can see. Their fierce glare bores into you, and you tug against the hold again. A few of his fingers slip, and you gain a little bit of movement back, a little bit of extra room to arch against him. Until there’s one more flash, illuminating the planes of his face in a split-second. You don’t have to look to know the tethers are back, keeping you against the beam, unable to reach out.

“Perhaps I should have done this ages ago,” he murmurs. He runs his hands down until they graze the meeting of your shirt and pants. “Even if I had to wrestle with another belt, I would have done so much more easily after keeping you like this.”

He shoves one hand up your shirt to furiously knead at your breast. He shoves the other around you to drag you even closer than your leg can drag him, digging his nails into the small of your back as he swallows your moans with a kiss.

He shoves his tongue down your throat, a growl following and reverberating against your own voice box. The rhythm resumes, far more desperate and far more rough. He keeps you on that edge that teeters between pain and pleasure until both collide and meld in ways you haven’t experienced since Arden was alive.

_Enough about the past. There’s only now, only Koz._

Koz draws back suddenly. He blinks, one eye squinting. You only realize he’s wordlessly curious because he hums, looking at the faint silver strings still connected to his fingers.

“Darling?” He tips your head up to face him. “That was unusual for you. What’s on your mind?”

You force yourself to replay the last few minutes, and as soon as you parse your thoughts, your breathing hitches for a second. And then you laugh.

“Is this good laughter or hysterical laughter?” he asks, making butterfly kisses against your eyelashes.

You grapple yourself under control and answer, “A little of both, maybe? I… I tried to shove away thoughts of Arden as soon as I had them.”

He coughs, thought it sounds suspiciously like a hum of victory cut off at the last moment.

“I see,” he says, a graceful enough recovery. You snort, and he nuzzles nose to nose. “Sorry, that’s not what—”

“No, I know. I just…” a lump forms in your throat. “I didn’t expect that.”

The tip of his nose trails through a tear that break loose from the corner of your eye, and Koz inhales sharply.

“Do we need to stop for a bit?”

“No!” you say quickly. “No, we don’t. I’m just a little surprised at myself. It’s so complicated.”

“If it helps…” He sighs and shifts so that he’s taking up a more subtle rhythm. “If it helps, sometimes thoughts of Xiorena invade my mind when I’m with you. Her smile. Her laughter. Her indomitable attitude.”

“Not that different from Arden, apparently.”

“I suppose not. But sometimes, as I’ve uncovered more memories, she’s the first I think of. And a few times since you saved us from the lair, I’ve had to outright banish her image from my mind when we were together.”

“Thinking of her while we’re going at it isn’t a crime, you know.”

“No. But I have so many overwhelming feelings surge through me surrounding her whole existence that it’s easier for me to shove her aside and enjoy myself in the moment. I mourn after.”

You watch his glowing eyes through the darkness. They focus to the middle distance, and though the thrusts don’t stop, they slow.

“Koz?”

He shakes his head and resumes the previous, already languid pace. You shift your arms, shaking out a bit of stiffness.

“Yes, darling?”

“Fuck me already. Please.”

The least bit of hesitation makes him stutter, but it just as quickly passes, and he hisses on the inhale. On the exhale, he pulls at the hem of your shirt, pulling it out of the way for him to hook his fingers through your belt loops and yank your bottoms down until you can feel the cold breeze make your skin pucker into goosebumps. And then he shoves them further down.

“As you wish,” he huffs.

He reaches down between you, and after a minute of fiddling, he presses back in. You let his kisses in again, humming against his tongue and reveling in the shuddering response. And then nearly choking as he shoves his way into you, your natural slick as the only reprieve to the sudden but welcome stretch.

There’s a whole minute and a half where neither of you move. You simply take in the sensations of pleasure and pressure and of the feel of each other’s lips on your own and your leg around his waist, drawing him so close, and his nails not so much raking against your skin as they are barely tracing it, making you shiver with each pass.

You break first, rolling your hips against his. He gasps and shoves your shirt over your chest, diving down to lave his tongue across your nipple as he starts up a brutal pace, one that has our tailbone ramming into the beam over and over again as he loses himself in you.

“How dare you—” he manages, groaning as you catch some of his skin in your teeth when he comes too close to escape unscathed. “How _dare_ you do this to me.”

“Stop me, then,” you say.

The pace increases, and you spasm with every deep thrust that jabs deep inside you, a few hitting against your cervix to mix more pain and pleasure together. Your moans stop where his start and vice versa until you can only focus on the glowing eyes in front of you, equally enthralled with your own gaze. He’s panting, pressing his open mouth to yours, exchanging wasted breaths. He licks his lips and whispers your name, slamming in a few more times before crying out.

At the last moment, he slips out and comes against the beam. He leans against you shuddering in small waves and alternating between running his tongue over your neck and biting.

“Koz? You okay?”

He stays there for a few more moments. When his trembling stops, he tugs you around the beam the least bit, pulling you away from the splatter.

“Koz?”

“I’m fine, darling, but it just so happens you and I have the same opinions on the taste and texture.”

Before you can ask him to clarify, he drops to his knees. You strain your neck to follow his eyes, watching them dart around your midsection. Meanwhile, his fingertips brush over your belly and trace around your hips and thighs where they’re exposed. He leans in and presses a lingering kiss to one leg, slowly working his way down until he reaches your knee, where your pants bunch up. He lifts your leg the rest of the way out, kissing his way all over it until it’s free. He repeats with the other leg, and by the time they’re completely off, you’re back to tugging at the restraints and whimpering for him to get on with it.

Finally, _finally_ he sits up on his knees, shoulders propping up your legs. You cross your ankles behind his head, and his breath quickens as his head moves closer to the apex of your pelvis. One last glance at you, one last glimpse of his eyes, and they blink out into darkness. Nothing happens, and you shift a little, start to speak.

You can’t help but yelp and freeze up at the sudden lick against you. It’s far more potent than other times; you couldn’t anticipate it, couldn’t prepare yourself for the touch—

Another whimper escapes you at the next lick, and you cross your ankles tighter as he sucks on your clit. He alternates between digging his nails into your thighs and massaging them with his knuckles, and your mind thrashes between the different sensations.

“That’s it,” he says, lips tickling against you as they move. “So very good…”

He bites the sensitive skin at your thigh, and “Koz!” tumbles out of your mouth with a voice crack. You strain to look down again, and while you can see the vague outline of his head moving, he keeps his eyes hidden so that you can’t eve try to anticipate him. Another nip, right next to the last one. Another. And then he switches legs, making you spasm at the sudden bite, and then you can barely process that when he’s back at your folds, lapping and sucking and lightly running his teeth over your now extremely sensitive clit.

So close, so close, so close.

The coiling in your middle winds tighter and tighter the longer he goes on like this until you’re arching so far off the beam that the back of your mind temporarily pings a warning that you might dislocate a shoulder like this.

So close, _so close…_

One more tightening of your ankles to draw him closer. A few more minutes of him laving his tongue across your clit over and over and over, occasionally pulling back the least bit for air and to moan and speak words of praise and glory against you. Despite the darkness, you close your eyes and give yourself over to absolute pleasure.

Finally, all at once, you tip over the edge. All the buildup and teasing and stops and starts rattle through you, all justified in an instant as your climax releases through your tensing muscles and strangled cry.

Koz licks a few more times against you to work you through it, and then he settles back, kneeling down so that your legs fall limply to the side. The dark cottage fills with the sounds of your heavy panting. At some point you open your own eyes, discombobulated until you glance down to see his glowing eyes staring up at you, wide and focused. As soon as you meet them, he trails his nose against your leg, still looking at you, to make sure you know he’s there.

He taps one of your legs, and you swing it off his shoulder. As soon as you touch it down, he dismisses the tethers around your wrists and catches you as you sink down to sit. Koz captures your mouth in a deep, relaxing kiss for several minutes, only breaking at when you started to shift against him again, ready for another round. He pulls back, and you can see his silhouette and a bit of his clothing.

“Are you all right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before carefully switching places with you so that he’s leaning up against the beam, you in front. He rotates each of your shoulders, checking for soreness, and then starts massaging them to work out any remaining tension or pain.

“I’m much better than a few hours ago, that’s for sure,” you reply. Your head lolls back as he digs his thumbs into a few particularly knotted areas. As soon as the spikes of pain clear up for each of them, nothing but bliss replaces it.

“Good.” He sighs. “I already know I wasn’t on my best behavior at the meeting, but I nearly—what was it Jack said once? ‘Threw hands?’—at Toothiana when she confronted you about the Sources.”

You take in a deep breath and let out an equally long sigh. His massage pauses for a second.

“I mean, same,” you say, “but I get where she’s coming from. She has this whole collection of cursed relatives she’s been trying to save over the last few centuries, not to mention her beef with the shadows in general. But I just… I cannot justify tampering with the Sources like that. Look at what happened to me.”

Already you can feel the whole day weighing heavily upon your being. From the mentally taxing meeting to the walk around town to the physical exertion just now. Part of you wants to close your eyes and sleep it off, but another part is celebrating the fact that the want/need for sleep isn’t nearly as strong as it was a few weeks ago. Koz resumes the massage, trailing his fingers down your arms after a few minutes and then crossing them in front of you to drag you into a hug.

“She has a point, though.” He kisses your cheek. “As much as I support you, I also know the shadows too intimately to write off using the amplified Sources as a means of getting ahead out of hand.”

“I…” You what? Understand? Sympathize? The slight haze in your brain from all the physical activity ironically has you seeing clearly from others’ perspectives. “I just don’t want to repeat the mistakes I made in life. I thought I was protecting my people when I made that poison for the military, but I was just dooming a whole other set of human beings because I believed ‘it was the only way.’ But that wasn’t true. There were other ways the governments could have taken it besides resorting to gross, underhanded tactics. Peaceful means, even.”

“I can tell you right now, we aren’t going to be able to negotiate our way out of a final fight with the shadows,” Koz says. “Not all of the fearlings used to be sentient beings. Not all of them can be reasoned with. And besides that…” he hesitates, and then continues, “Besides that, I remember what it was like to be so connected to them. The shadows have a desperate need to survive, and thus far, they’ve been really good at doing just that.”

“But what if we can talk the few fearlings that were sentient beings to our side? What if we can disarm the shadows of those troops?”

“I don’t think it’ll be enough to overwhelm the rest of the shadows. Especially the one Nightmare Man left.”

“What if—”

“Darling.” Koz turns your face until you can see him in the shade. His expression is neutral and pained. “What’s more important to you: stopping the wrongdoings going on now, or not repeating some semblance of your past mistakes?”

The question makes you pause, swallowing and even choking on the immediate response your mouth was prepared to form before your brain caught up at the last second. What is more important? Longstanding morals or immediate victory?

_Suffering should end as soon as possible,_ one half of your brain shouts. The other half rebuts, _But what if the wrong entities get caught up in the effort to end suffering? What does the end of suffering even look like? Everyone crossing the bridge to Nirvana at the same time?_

Whatever part of your brain Kinetics & Chem coaxed over to their side makes a strong argument for finding a solution, if not the _definitive_ solution to this crisis. It’s always a problem to be solved, isn’t it? That’s what it boils down to: a puzzle with more than one solution, each more dubious than the last.

Technically, you can fulfill that impulse. You’ve seen how in the last few weeks, though you haven’t even had a full conversation about it with yourself.

“I want this to end as soon as possible,” you answer Koz. “But I’m also well aware that there isn’t a true end to this war. Darkness breeds even in the most steadfast light, so we’ll be dealing with this shit probably forever. It’s almost pointless to fight against, but I’d rather keep my morals than lose them to the apathy of time and disappointment. I guess.”

“All right. I think I follow.” He holds you around your middle. “So what’s your solution?”

Your silence stretches out do long that Koz jostles you a little to try and prompt a response. At the final moment, you sigh and reach a hand up to rub your neck.

“I might have stumbled across something while I was at my son’s,” you admit. “But it’s not nearly as immediately strong against the shadows. Though, it might just be our saving grace if we use it properly.”

“Tell me,” he replies, “and I’ll let you know if it stands a chance against the larger forces of darkness.”

As you detail your observations to Koz, he hesitates in some areas, but becomes eager in others. That’s not enough to encourage you, but neither is it enough to stop you from explaining how this could benefit him and the Guardians, at the least in the short term. At the most, for a few centuries before the shadows reconvene and learn to fight against these suggestions. At the end of your explanation, Koz hums, grazing his lips against your neck.

“I see.” He’s speechless for a good two minutes, but then says, “I think I can try to explain all this to the others, but they’re often so focused on the immediate and the good that it might give them hesitation. But, I think this is the best compromise you can make, given your past.”

“Thanks, Koz,” you say. You twist yourself around and straddle his hips. He grunts, and you trace his lips with your thumb. You lean in. “But I have a question for you now.”

“Go ahead.” His voice cracks and he licks his lips. You pull away a bit and he lets out a small whimper, which cuts off as soon as you place your hand over the locket around his neck.

“What about _her?”_

He takes a deep breath, avoiding your eyes, though he does take the opportunity to carefully comb his fingers through your hair.

“She can wait, can’t she? I know she’s alive. I know she’s, presumably, well. I can seek forgiveness later—”

“Wouldn’t she be useful in the war? She’s quite powerful.”

His hands stop moving, and his jaw clenches. A pang of guilt flows over you, because you know this is a terrible way to draw parallels to your own issues. But maybe he can understand how important it is if you make it personal.

“Yes,” he finally answers. “Yes, she’s powerful, and that power might help tip the balance. But—”

“But what? Don’t want your child involved in this sort of thing?”

“She doesn’t want _herself_ involved in this sort of thing!” He squirms free and strides over to the washbasin, slapping a washcloth into the cold water and running it over himself. He hooks it around his neck, looks back at you, and sighs. “Maybe it would be better to keep her out of it until we’ve forced them dormant again.”

He doesn’t believe what he’s saying, judging by the grip on the cloth and the way he flings it back into the washbasin. You lift yourself up and make your way over to him, placing one hand on his arm. He flinches, but covers your hand with his own. You turn until you’re in front of him, once again holding your hands over the locket.

“You promised me you’d search for her. I understand why the therapy came first, but you promised.” He yanks your hands off of it and clenches them in his own. But he still won’t meet your gaze. 

“I—!” He leans in, baring his teeth, stopping as he breaches past your bubble and nearly touches noses. “I want her approval. I want her to like me. I _want_ her to be my daughter again, after regaining so many memories of her and Xio. It’s the same thing I’ve always wanted since crashing onto this fucking planet.” He finally looks at you, tears nearly spilling over. “A family.”

“So what are you afraid of, Koz?”

“That she won’t want the same thing! That I will always be Pitch Black to her forevermore.”

You close the distance between him and yourself, nuzzling against his cheek and lacing your fingers with his. He wraps one around your back and sobs into your shoulder. You two sit like that for who knows how long, as the windows are still covered. But his crying subsides, and he turns to deep, passionate kisses to work out the rest of his anxiety. Not that you mind, but it’s merely a bandage over the wound, one you’ve had to finally try and close yourself recently.

“Koz,” you say. He meets your eyes again, his face scrunched up in agony. “Like I said before about Manny: rip the bandage off and get it over with.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“That’s a risk you have to take, babe. I know Jordan worked out for me, but he also has that pesky mortality that guides some of his decisions. He decided it wasn’t worth stress in his twilight years to keep hating me, if he ever did.”

“What if—”

“How long are you going to keep asking yourself that until you can’t take it anymore?!”

He’s silent, and the two of you stay in the quiet contemplation for another hour or so. He takes a turn to sit by the window and watch the snow. You take out a few books and try to lose yourself in research about Selene.


	91. Moral Compromise

Kozmotis’ partner carefully drops tiny spire shards into Toothiana’s and the rabbit’s hands. The other Guardians crowd around the opposite side of the table, same as him. Scooting their chair out of the way, they whistle for Kidra to stand near them. Both Toothiana and the rabbit look like they’ve thrust their hands into a pile with a deeply upsetting texture. Which is about right for how touching the shards feels, according to his partner. Though, it’s only been so uncomfortable since they managed to detach themself from the shadows, much like it is for him. Reaching out, they grab the two Guardians and place their hands on Kidra.

“Feel that?” his partner asks.

The rabbit and Toothiana close their eyes, and for a second, it seems like they just cannot understand what his partner is talking about. Kozmotis barely comprehends, and they’ve already run through this process with him. Suddenly, however, the rabbit takes a sharp inhale and speaks.

“That’s the hum of plants. Of a promise to look forward to. Hope,” he whispers. He opens his eyes and pets Kidra’s neck before knitting his brows together and glancing at his other hand. “In both things?”

“I created Kidra from a mess of different magical substances being dumped into a shadow and mixed up, but not combined.” Kozmotis coughs trying to banish the shame of his half-baked creation a year ago. “The harmony of the items is different, but only just so. I think it’s because the shard is belief-based rather than a specific, derived power. But by that token, it means that you should be able to use the concentrated belief in the shard.”

The wizard scoots to the front. “May I?”

His partner places a shard into his hand and he holds it for a moment, same grimace crossing his face as he comes into contact with the crystallized shadows. He hums after a moment, and then he covers it with his other hand. There’s a small flash of gray-pink between his fingers, but it recedes as he coughs and gags for a second. Before anyone can ask if he’s okay, he stands up straight, holds it tighter, and chants “I believe!” a few times.

The next flash is blinding, but as the spots in front of Kozmotis’ eyes blink away, two dozen doves flutter up and away from a puff of smoke. They disappear into the branches of the tree and Ombric tears past everyone.

“Father!”

Ms. Goose follows, with the rest close behind. They find Ombric up to his elbows in soap and water, scraping at his hands. He rinses and dries them, and then turns them over to inspect. No marks, no stains.

“Well… it worked,” he says, shivering and grinding his teeth again. “It feels disgusting, but it worked. Very well, seeing as how I meant to summon only three doves.”

At that, the rabbit holds his shard up, swallows, and concentrates. A burst of green, one shockwave, and some barely restrained gagging later, a glowing vine with oval leaves wraps around him, coiling and tensing like a snake about to strike. He blinks for a second, and then motions for it to jab out, catching Jack’s shoulder.

“Ah!”

Jack flips through the air, stunned only for a moment, before regaining his equilibrium. There’s a moment of tension, and then he shoots through the air, pinning the rabbit to the wall.

“What the heck, man!”

The vines trail away, crumbling into dark residue as they flake to the floor. The rabbit nods.

“Huh. That actually took the bags right offa your face.” He shakes his head. “But now that I see it, though, you look like you’re actually more mature with ‘em on there.”

Jack looks confused for a moment, and then he flexes his fingers. He takes a deep breath and zooms round. Then he beams.

“Oh that’s much better! Thanks!” He flicks a bit of ice into the rabbit’s ear and then hurls himself out the nearest opening before the next line of complaints can reach him. Kozmotis watches North lean over.

“What—”

“Healin’ magic. Tried givin’ him a boost cause he’s been in the pits all year.” The rabbit shrugs. “Worked a lot better than I thought it would. A nice pick-me-up for him.”

North still watches where Jack disappeared. “Isn’t that ‘pick-me-up,’ as you say, just temporary?”

“Shhh,” Bunny replies, waving him off. He then rubs his paws on his leg and runs them over the wood. “Need to erase this awful texture from my mind, though.”

One by one, the others take a shot at using a shard to enhance their power. It’s far more noticeable in Kozmotis’ more tangible threads, Sanderson’s golden whips. And, when a few townsfolk drag him back to Big Root after he ran out of extra energy, Jack’s ice becomes noticeably more powerful.

“Oh, good, I’m back up to my average with this,” the sprite snarks. Still, he finds another grin. “I’ll use it, and then you can see me actually power-boosted once Burgess is free.”

North’s power is still invisible, still more of an atmospheric temperament. But the strength of the wave hits hard as it passes over. Kozmotis watches the bright, sleepy town of Santoff Claussen bustle in its timid way, but he plasters himself to his partner’s side as North’s power seeps in, gazing out at the streets and forest beyond with frustrated wanderlust and curiosity. They as much cling to him, so at least he understand their next activity once this meeting and demonstration concludes.

Ms. Goose is the only one who refuses to touch the shard.

“No thank you,” is all she says. “I’ll work on research. Call for me if you need me to shout something down. Or if you need a bedtime story, I’m not picky.”

All the while, his partner watches on, pursing their lips and sighing whenever they see another Guardian pleased with how much a boost they get from the concentrated belief, shadow textures be damned. They knew this was a possibility as soon as they explained it to him. Yet, he can’t help but worry for their psyche. A compromise, this is, and one he hopes his partner can withstand regardless of the consequences.

“Well, I can’t take it back, now, can I?” they say later. “I just hope it’s as helpful as I think it’s going to be.”

“We have a few items to tick off our list before the real test,” Kozmotis replies. “If anything goes wrong with this, then we’ll know before we try to take the spire.”

The next step after this, of course, is reconnaissance and disruption. Kozmotis, Sanderson, Nightlight, and Toothiana pair off at her jungle at noontime a few days later and scour for any breaks in the veil leading to the shadow’ realm. She rides on the back of Kidra, occasionally stopping to take stock of the trees or ground. After all, this is her domain. She may not have an intrinsic link to the land itself, but she’s been nearly a part of it for so long that the atmosphere is second nature.

“Something’s wrong nearby,” she says, pointing in a certain direction. She carefully dismounts and turns in a circle, her feathers standing on end as she faces the direction she pointed. “That way.”

He helps her back onto Kidra and they slowly make their way through the dense foliage. The closer they get, the more he can sense it as well. His link to every portal was severed once his shadow powers were taken, but he can’t ever forget that creepy, haunted aura such breaks give off. Like the tinny heaviness that surrounds old Victorian mansions; like the uncanny nature of perfect geometric shapes found far beyond where people roam; like seeing hyper-realistic faces appear and recede in stones. Or like the outstretched branches of this small, gnarled tree, slicing his skin where he brushes against it.

“Augh!” Kozmotis leaps away a step, running a hand over the closing cut. Kidra nearly stumbles, and Toothiana clutches tighter to their neck to avoid being tossed off.

“Find it?” she asks, shivering.

“I believe so.” Kozmotis walks around the stunted trunk taking in how odd it is. “I can see why the shadows thought to make it into an entrance.”

“Spooky looking?”

“Like a person trapped in wood. The leaves don’t even point upwards.”

Her shoulders drop. “Does it have wings?”

Kozmotis takes a step back. “There are a few branches and vines that might resemble a dragonfly’s wing if you look close enough. But its partner has possibly rotted off.”

She takes a violent inhale and starts muttering in that chirping language of hers. He takes another look at the tree, realizing that if he moves to the correct angle, its silhouette is a near-perfect match for hers. Save for, horrifyingly, a missing wing and head

_Oh…_

“Take it easy,” he says. “Once we get rid of the shadows around it, they can rest in peace.”

“I tried so hard to get them all,” she whispers. “I could only gather a dozen out of so many.”

“With any luck, we’ll be able to lift their curse sooner than later.”

“If your partner wasn’t a coward, it’d be sooner than sooner.”

“Listen, fairy,” Kozmotis growls, holding himself back far enough so that he doesn’t lash out. “They have made themself perfectly clear how they feel about possibly transgressing into their old work habits again. Unlike us, they’re not a hardened warrior who cans shove away their morals when it’s convenient in service of the greater good. They’re also no longer someone who can simply ignore the line between good and necessary anymore now that they’ve been in the field, rather than hiding in a lab.”

“This is my _family!”_ she shrieks, tossing herself off of Kidra. She stumbles a few steps before catching herself. “The family I was denied because of this curse!”

Toothiana rushes up and grasps the outstretched arm of the fallen Sister of Flight. She sniffs, and tears run from her eyes, running her hand up to where the face should be. She grasps around when she can’t find it, and lets out such a bloodcurdling scream that Kozmotis instantly draws his sword and glances around to make sure the shadows won’t descend upon them that instant. After confirming they’re safe, he heads over to her.

“You need to let go,” he says, drawing out a small pellet. “I’ll get rid of the break in the veil, but you have to let go and back up.”

She grinds her teeth, but does exactly as he begs. Kidra swoops in and curls around her, allowing her to bury her face in their short mane. Once they’re a few yards away, Kozmotis takes a step back, lines up a shot, and tosses the pellet at the warped trunk.

It explodes on impact, residual smoke giving way to a glowing vine snaking up and around the corpse. Shimmering, golden roots pierce through into the ground, and an aura of peace smothers the haunted one. After a minute or so, the growth slows and stops, leaving the Sister of Flight surrounded by a pulsing vine. But, the form is no longer leaking with shadow energy, and the thin part of the veil grows smaller and smaller.

“It’s done,” he finally says. “Let’s move on.”

She’s silent as they continue to search for openings, except for muttering tooth locations to her fairies and pointing the direction she feels the odd break. Not too long after they find their next entrance, Sanderson and Nightlight burst from the canopy. They fly in a tight circle, weapons out. But as soon as they realize it’s only the two of them, they settle to the ground.

“We heard a scream,” Sanderson whispers. “Are you all right?”

“Yep!” Toothiana chirps, smiling and leaning over Kidra’s back. Her wings buzz behind her, causing her to lift off an inch or so. “Just closing a few doorways. Got a little excited at the thought of the fearlings trying to find a way out and not being able to find it.”

She laughs—fairly convincingly despite the truth. Sanderson cheerfully replies to her, but silently forms a few symbols with his sand.

 _Is she telling the truth?_ he says. Kozmotis shrugs, and after a small hesitation, a new set of symbols flies up. _I guess I’ll hear it at the Palace later._

Sanderson and Nightlight part, and they continue their half of the search. Five more within a five mile radius of the spire. Far more densely packed than when he had been in charge. The shadows are desperate for backup, it seems. Desperate to protect what they’ve already gone through the trouble of building.

Some hours later, they retreat to the Palace and meet up with the other team. Kozmotis pulls Sanderson to the side to hear his report.

“We closed up a total of seven.” Sanderson shakes his head. “And we got a decent look at the spire on the way. There are massive waves of fearlings there, crowding into every scrap of shadow they could find while also keeping watch.”

“You didn’t have to fight, did you?”

“Almost, but we managed to outrun their scouts.”

“Good… Say, Sanderson, you didn’t happen to come across any warped trees out there, did you? Covered in a dreadful aura? Perhaps looks somewhat like one particular fairy?”

Sanderson watches him carefully, then glances back to Toothiana where she’s hovering, Nightlight guiding her around as her fairies flutter nearby. He thinks for a moment, and then ducks around a corner. Kozmotis follows him in time to see a floating blob of golden sand form into a familiar shape.

“This is what you’re talking about, right?” He grimaces. “It-it crossed my mind, but I wanted to hold out hope it wasn’t true.”

“We found one, too. She confirmed it was a Sister.”

Sanderson swipes out and crushes the image in a fist. “We saw a total of two. Both of them dismembered or overgrown. We tossed the pellets down and moved on.”

Kozmotis sighs. One the one hand, he has to compliment the shadows on using all of their available resources to try and build up their available ranks. On the other, the sick twistedness punches him in the guts. How in the world did he ever manage to let those kinds of actions bounce right off his mind as if tactics overrode respect for the fallen?

_That doesn’t matter right now. Let’s keep preparing for the next few steps._

“We don’t need to tell her there are more. She feels guilty enough.”

Sanderson nods. “Time for the next step, I suppose.”

They all hang around a little longer, watching Toothiana map a third dimension around the Place as she flies from place to place. Nightlight guides her, as do yet another contingent of fairies. In time, her lighthearted laughter and jokes replace her fuming silence, and she once again sounds like the scatterbrained fairy whom he resented simply for her annoying chatter. He hadn’t realized what an effective distraction is it from her true depths.


	92. Opposites Connect

The warp in the air is the only warning you get before Bunny and Katherine step through into Ombric’s library. They immediately shift to the nearest chairs and collapse.

“All right, time for reading,” she says, shaking off her shift helping with Christmas prep.

“Time for relaxing,” Bunny replies, sinking down further in his chair and closing his eyes.

“Don’t you have only half a year before _your_ big day?”

Bunny just snorts and waves her off. “I’ll make it, don’t worry.”

“I don’t know, there _is_ this one fable—”

“You threaten me with it every year, and every year I still manage.” He opens one eye and looks at her, smiling, then casts it over to you and Ombric. “And what’ve you been up to?”

“Mostly reading through their notes,” Ombric says, holding up your notebook. “Lots of interesting finds, although I do wish we’d found you years ago. Having to go through the most basic discoveries from centuries past yourself is an annoying setback. Who knows where you’d be if you’d come here even ten years ago!”

“Uh, thanks,” you reply. You hold up the books in your own lap. “Still reading up on moon entities and shadows.”

“Any luck finding out about Selene?”

“Kind of? I always knew Selene was a Greek goddess, but the stories about her and the Selene I know don’t match up at all. I’ll try contacting her this week as the moon is waning, see if I can’t grab any more clues out of her. And also to make sure she hasn’t been too drawn to that beast.”

You blink and rub your dry eyes. “I could probably use a change of scenery, though. Or…” You take a deep breath. “Bunny, could I please get some more samples of Spring?”

He runs his hands down his ears, tugging them back a bit and huffing. He opens his eyes to glare at you and cross his arms.

“For research purposes or for fighting purposes?”

“Research.” You glare back, speaking through gritted teeth. “And also to keep refining and mixing it to find a cure for Rina. You know, that poor little girl who’s stuck between being a fearling and a human.”

“Easy, easy!” he says, holding up his hands. He shakes his head and thumps his foot. “Let’s go, then.”

Ombric slides up. “May I come along, as well?”

“Sure. Why not.”

Bunny drops into the hole, and you and Ombric clamber after him. Katherine calls to you as the hole closes up, “I’ll keep looking into the moon!”

You catch up with Bunny in his hub area. A few egg statues and small eggs walk around here and there, the larger ones herding the smaller down certain tunnels. It’s still a lively atmosphere, but much quieter with the holiday so far away. Once you catch up, Bunny leads you through the tunnels toward the Source of Spring.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been down this way, Bunny,” Ombric says.

“You never asked, old man,” he replies, pushing a few branches out of the way. “Besides, the fewer people know how to get to it, the safer it is.”

“The shadows found it, remember?" you say. "Like, two weeks before y’all saved us from the lair.”

“And yet, they haven’t managed to get back in since then.” He looks back for a second. As he starts to move on ahead, you just catch him leaning down to a resting egg statue and hear him whisper, “Run a few extra patrols, just to be sure.”

Once you’re at the Source, Ombric goes off on a stuttering ramble as he marvels over the different plants and the atmosphere in the room. Bunny tries not to take his eyes off you, as always, but after Ombric loses himself in the dense foliage, he dashes after him. You hear nothing for a few minutes until Bunny shouts, “Stop pickin’ my plants!”

Meanwhile, you lower the containers into the hole leading to the Source one by one. It’s kind of a tedious process, and you’re sure there must be an easier way, especially since being this near to the hole means you’re getting a constant face full of the radiation-like feelings. The longer it goes on, however, the more it cycles between hope and… naivete, you’ve decided it is.

The cycles aren’t regular. A good twenty minutes rolls by stuck in the uncanny opposite of hope, and then true hope lasts only about five before changing yet again. You barely resist the impulse to reach down into it, despite the welcoming aura. Once you drag up the last of the containers and seal it off, Bunny returns with Ombric, who’s carrying an armful of various giant plants.

“Decided he could have ingredients after all?”

Bunny sighs. “It’s the friends and family privilege. But seriously, old man,” he barks at Ombric, “take it easy and don’t beg me for more too soon.”

He leads the two of you back out, and Ombric nearly jabs you in the face as he picks up one of your glowing hands. You yank it back, making an irritated grunt. He winces.

“Sorry. I’ve never seen this before, and my curiosity was faster than my manners.”

Instead of leading you out of the tunnels, however, he takes you back to his house. The eclectic burrow is the same as ever, but you carefully perch yourself on one of the paint-splattered stools near the doorway, just in case. He heads into his kitchen and soon enough the smell of chocolate wafts through. Ombric sits back.

“I’ve missed a lot over the last century, but Bunny’s chocolate is one of the things I missed most. Please don’t tell North,” he adds with a guilty nod. “His is very simple and comforting, but he hardly takes chances with his recipes.”

“Unlike me.” Bunny balances the mugs on a small tray and hands them out to you. “Dark chocolate with pomegranate, cardamom, and nutmeg. Perfect for fall. Or an Australian spring, I guess.”

You take a sip and let the bitter, tart concoction swirl around your tongue for a bit, watching the others. Bunny patiently entertains you two, not saying much over the next hour or so. To be fair, neither do you, except to answer Ombric’s incessant questions about your notes. He’s a master magician, and a little prideful, so he constantly talks about his works. That being said, he has you hanging off of every word when he goes off about his space adventures or his life in Atlantis.

After awhile, your cups empty and Ombric settles back into his chair even more, yawning and starting to sort through his haul. Bunny clears his throat.

“Hey, Ombric.” The wizard looks up. “I just remembered that I managed to make a new crossbreed of one of the egg plants. They’re just down that hallway if you wanna give me your opinion.”

Ombric is halfway out of his seat when he pauses, looking expectantly at Bunny. He rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah, you can take a few leaves and flowers, too.”

“Wonderful!”

Ombric scurries off, leaving you and Bunny alone. Not wanting this to get too awkward while you wait, you summon a packet of notes from your quiver—lists of possible combinations and ratios that could help you drag the shadows out of Rina without causing her too much pain.

But you don’t get very far into them when Bunny clears his throat. You glance his way, then return to the notes. He clears it again, and you set them on your lap.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks, the implications leaking from all six syllables.

You huff, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I _am_ fine with my boyfriend. Nothing you say is going to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m slowly gettin’ over that. Although if you ever need…” He waves his paw around and switches gears. “I meant with everythin’ _else_ going on. Like with the shards. And Tooth.”

You shrug. “If it works, it works, right? We might as well get rid of the shadows as quickly as possible.”

“You even believe the words comin’ outta your mouth right now?”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his clasped hands, no expression on his face. It’s your turn to gape wordlessly at him for a moment, failing to find the right words to what amounts to a yes or no question. He glances towards the doorway when a muffled, faraway shout of delight echoes up the tunnel, but flicks right back to you.

“It seems to me,” he continues, “that you’ve come up against one of the worst conundrums we can get ourselves into. Take one route and lose yourself completely despite takin’ a victory over your opponent. Take another route and lose yourself anyway because you still slid a toe one inch over that line separatin’ good from evil.”

“Using the shards is a temporary measure,” you finally say. “They’re not nearly as effective or boosting as the Sources, but they do provide an edge. And Tooth… she’s not wrong!”

“No, she’s not. She’s been hurtin’ like this ever since I met her. She’s just real good at hidin’ it most of the time.”

“I’ll bet you two have a lot to talk about because of your pasts.”

“We’ve already spent that bondin’ time. It’s useless to talk about over and over again when we’ve heard each other’s stories and seen each other cry multiple times over the centuries.”

“But it still hurts, apparently.”

Bunny stares into the distance and sighs. “But anyway, about the shards… I’ll back you up if you wanna stop usin’ ‘em.”

“What?”

“I’ve seen it for myself, and yeah, that’s a lot of power we could use to our advantage. But I agree with what you said just now: too temporary. Besides, once we push the shadows back, are we really gonna continue usin’ it? Even if you find a way to take all the shadows out, are we really gonna sit on a huge chunk of solid belief instead of lettin’ it out in to the world to turn into whatever magic it will?”

“To be fair on that last point.” You drag out a collection of shards from the three spires you’ve toppled. It glitters a dull violet-magenta as you shake the container. “Unless the shadows are what’s holding it together, then the solid belief remains in the crystal until it’s used.”

He shrugs at that, nodding. “All right, then. Guess my follow-up question is are we really gonna keep the spire up if it’s purified and let it keep collectin’ belief just because it’s useful to us? Cause then we gotta defend it when the shadows inevitably come back.”

“That’s pretty much everything I’m worried about, too.”

“Well, like I said,” Bunny grunts as he hauls himself up. “If you wanna retract usage of the shards, I’m on board with the decision. I think we have better ways to deal with this.”

“Like the Sources?”

He pauses, paw hovering over your cup before he snatches it up. “Maybe,” he says. “But I’m a little wary about them, too.”

He gathers everything up and dumps them in the kitchen before striding through the sitting room towards the door. He takes a deep breath and raises his paws to cup his mouth, but before he can shout for Ombric, you call out to him.

“Bunny!” He looks over, confused or irritated. It’s hard to tell sometimes. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Are _you_ okay? Especially since the last time we talked like this in my lab?”

His ears start twitching, and one paw goes up to fiddle with his whiskers. Eventually, he rakes his claws down his ears.

“No,” he admits. “I’m still not sure how to work this out. Cause I gotta work with him, at least for the near future. Although…”

He gets a sour look on his face, then he glances around, checking every corner of his house before scooting close. Not so close that he crowds you, but close enough that you lean in your ear.

“I was hangin’ out with Jack and Sandy the other day, and they were—I _think_ they were mostly jokin’ around—but they were goin’ on and on about if your Boogeyman became a full-fledged Guardian.”

Your jaw drops at that. Excitement wells up, pride on Koz’s behalf, but one look into Bunny’s rumpled face and you bite it back.

“Have they heard something about it from Manny?”

“No!” he shouts immediately. He rubs his face. “No. Like I said, they were just talkin’ about it. About how good he’s gotten with kids, how it’s ‘cool’ to have him on their side. I told them to rack off after a bit.”

“What’d they do?”

“Stood there surprised. So I racked off instead.” He rakes his claws over his head and starts pacing. “I feel like I’m goin’ insane when I’m around my friends now! I know I shouldn’t hate in general, like I said to you earlier, but I can’t believe half of what I’m hearin’ from them! After everythin’ he’s done to me, to them, to this and other planets, to the whole Golden Age!”

He heaves breaths in and out, chest puffing and caving in rhythm, and then he groans and collapses on the nearest seat. You reach out, but he leans away as your hand reaches him. He scoots even farther out of your reach.

“I don’t even know why I’m tellin’ you all this,” he spits. “You don’t care. Heck, with all you’ve done, I think you deserve each other! I just…”

“Bunny.” You work to keep your voice so even that your throat hurts. He watches you, exhaustion sagging under his eyes. “Bunny, I don’t know what to say except that unless you have a time machine, there’s no changing the past. Koz did what he did, and while some of it was because of the shadows’ influence, yeah he was also kind of lucid. And you're also right in that I understand him on a level where I just _get_ the complications.

“But even if you don’t like him, you have to admit he’s come a long way in such a short time. This time last year, he was literally trying to take over the world, and now he gets excited if I just mention living together in my shitty treehouse.

“I know that doesn’t make up for everything—anything—but can you at least accept that he’s making an effort? I know the Pookas were—”

“Are.” You blink. He licks his lips. “‘The Pookas _are’_ not ‘were.’ Because if I know my race well enough, their stubbornness would keep them alive through anything. They’d just refuse to die and be done with it. At least I hope.” He laughs a little. “Yaknow, I think I’m less upset that he killed so many that day and stranded me here than I am about the fact that he took my mentor away from me. The one Pooka just oddball enough to accept me, but traditional enough to try and help me fit in. Him, I miss most of all.”

You weigh your chances, trying to scan his face and see if you can find some sort of opening. This obviously hangs over his head so much, but you don’t have enough context to even begin to understand.

Except for missing one of the most important people to you. One who died so long ago, life with them feels like a fading dream.

“I’m sorry,” you end up saying.

“I am, too. Maybe if I hadn’t been such a contrarian to their way of life, I’d’ve either died with them or been able to help them with that last bit they needed to win that battle.”

Ten seconds pass as you two stare at each other, unsure of what to say next. At the end of those ten seconds, however, Ombric enters the house with a cartoonish level of noise and chatter.

“Well!” he says, a few leaves falling out of a wriggling pocket. “That was quite interesting, Bunny. I feel so young again, having so much to explore and catch up on!”

Bunny squints, and then leans over, thrusting his hand into the moving pocket of Ombric’s robes. He pulls out a kicking egg and just looks at it for a moment. Ombric chuckles for a moment, letting out a small “Whoops” as Bunny gently sets it on the ground and gives it a nudge out toward the tunnels.

“Time to go, I guess,” Ombric says.

 _Finally._ You straighten yourself out and follow Ombric out to where he’s waving his hands around and conjuring a portal back to Big Root. Right as you’re about to step through, Bunny says, “Not takin’ anythin’ with you today?”

He holds out a wad of plants in his hand.

“I thought I wasn’t eligible for the friends and family privilege.”

He rolls his eyes. “You don’t. You do qualify for the research bundle, however.” His nose twitches. “It overlaps with the ‘Thanks for caring enough to check in’ bundle.”

He shoves the plants at you again, and you take them. He gives you and Ombric a small salute and in no time, the Warren swirls out of sight, leaving you back in the Big Root parlor. You stare at the bundle of leaves and twigs in your hand, starting to sort them out in terms of what you’ve already experimented with and what’s new. After a few minutes, there’s another warp in the air. Koz and Sandy step through, odd expressions sliding off their faces as they spot you and join you at the table.


	93. The Ambush

“Selene?” you call out, wrapping your cloak around yourself tighter.

Ganderly isn’t frozen over like the Pole or Santoff Claussen, but there’s still a chill around the area. Well, a relative chill, as Katherine sits nearby with short sleeves and a skirt that hits her knees. You’d’ve thought being in the Arctic for a decent chunk of the last year would build a tolerance, but it seems once a Southerner, always a Southerner. And if you can see your breath, that means it’s winter.

Ignoring that, you watch the dark night sky and listen out for Selene to reply. Kidra wraps themself around you, though there’s no appreciable change in temperature. They’re trying, though. Minutes go by without a single word or even an indication she’s heard you.

“Selene?” you call again. “I have some questions. Please answer me!”

Still nothing. You drop into the other chair at the table next to Katherine, _hmph_ -ing and crossing your arms. She’s not the most talkative thing out there, but she’s never outright ignored you. If anything, her talk about how she didn’t want to interfere in whatever you do made you think maybe she was always watching, even if she couldn’t always communicate.

After a few minutes, Katherine looks up from her reading. “No luck?”

“No, but the night is still young. Maybe she’s thinking.” You put your head on the table. “I hope so, anyway…”

Someone, probably a Raconturk, comes by and drops off something. Katherine thanks them, and as they leave she nudges your elbow. You look up, and she pushes a small plate and a glass over to you. You take one look at it and laugh.

“I spent seventy-five years not eating much because I didn’t need to, and ever since meeting y’all it’s like I’ve gone back to three meals a day.”

“That’s why they call it ‘comfort food.’” She winks. “It is a little weird, but I think doing these small, human things keeps us grounded. It lets us remember what being mortal was like and why we try to do our best to keep up with the humans we could so easily neglect and never miss.”

“Been there, done that. Good plan.”

You sit there for a few minutes, enjoying the night air, the food, and trading notes back and forth about your recent moon research.

“So, I was reading what your dad wrote about that time…” You waffle back and forth for a second on which name to use. “When Pitch invaded the dark side of the moon.”

“Oh? And what’d he say about it?”

“The clean-up mission he went on a few weeks after found a lot of broken machines, lots of craters, and a few remaining shadows.”

“Yes.”

“Well… I didn’t know the shadows would be able to survive up there on the moon. I guess it’s dark, so they could survive that way, but there doesn’t seem to be much of anything for them to feed on. No fear.”

“He took care of them before that would become a problem,” she replies. “I went back not long after that, trying to search for any clues that would lead us back to Pitch or his lair. For a moment, it seemed promising, as there were traces of shadow energy pulsing through the moon, but ultimately, we found nothing. And then we heard nothing from him until fifty years ago.”

“So Selene might be the only one who has the rest of the answers.”

“Frustratingly, yes, I think that is the case.”

Another dead end, and a worrying one at that, since you’ve heard nothing more from Selene. Neither about her past nor about what’s drawing her towards the beast. Your mind still goes on wild rides every so often, and the worst-case scenario your anxiety has been oh-so excited to share with you has been the eldritch thing overtaking Selene and using her power against the Earth. Even worse, your brain went on, was the wild possibility that it overtaking her would also overtake you by proxy.

_Just a horrible, passing thought,_ you remind yourself yet again. _No evidence for that, and if the Guardians’ relationship with Manny is anything like yours and Selene, then the one who grants magic and immortality is not, like, connected in that way._

Still, it gets to you so much that you ask Katherine about it.

“As far as I know, no, that’s not how it works.” She purses her lips and tugs at her hair. “But I’m not the best one to ask, really. Tooth, North, Bunny, or Jack might be able to help, as they’re the ones who got their powers directly from Manny. I—” She touches a finger to her lips and blushes slightly. You lean in. Without meeting your eyes, she mumbles, "I technically got mine from Nightlight."

You look at her weirdly, smiling as you try and guess the full story from the context clues. Before you can gently prod her for details, Jack swoops over the railing, waving.

“What’s up?” Jack sits cross-legged in the sir, slowly rotating as a bit of momentum catches him.

“Just curious,” you say. “As usual.”

“Dope. Any word from Team Spire?”

Today was the day. After a few more recon missions, the others had decided it was time to strike, especially while the shadows didn’t seem to suspect too much of anything. Just for safety—and to keep her occupied—Tooth is with you all at Ganderly to help with research. In truth, she’s off somewhere with a few Raconturks slowly learning how to fight again. She’d tried to insist on staying at the palace, nearer to the spire assault, but besides the fact that she’s trying to bite off more than she can she for the moment (“Give her one decade and even I will be even match again,” North had said), the constant overcast skies above the Palace and surrounding areas weren’t conducive to talking with Selene.

The rest of you are still waiting on standby in case the assault team needs help, though. Between them, and the work they’ve done closing some of the rifts, however, they should at least be able to take it over. Meanwhile, all three of you have your signal stones out, and Katherine and Jack subconsciously touch the pouches containing their teleporters.

“I’ll take it as a ‘no,’” Jack says. “That’s a good thing, right?”

You nod slightly, then a little more confidently when you see Katherine do the same. A bit of comfort, just one little bit, is all you get for that moment. But you eventually find yourself restless yet again.

*************

On the one hand, once they have control of this spire, defending it will be much simpler than if they had chosen any of the others. It’s location, being nestled against a rock face, means there are fewer angles to come at it. At least, fewer obvious angles.

On the other hand, everything that makes this spire the ideal one to take and protect is everything they’re going up against in order to take it themselves.

Armed with a few new concoctions and a pouchful of shards, Kozmotis and Sanderson set down ten miles from the spire to approach from the north, where it’s exposed.

They walk in silence, fingers twitching and eyes glancing all around. They move nearly on top of one another, not even deep into a true aura of fear; the anticipation, however, is a telling preamble. Suddenly, Sanderson jerks to a stop and shudders.

“Something wrong?” Kozmotis asks. The Sandman points just off to the side.

At first, he can’t see what the small spirit is referring to. But the longer he looks, the more clear the tangle of wooden limbs becomes. He winces, then walks over to it. The fresh, glimmering vines from their previous operation are still there, a little more settled into the environment after a week in the elements. The air about the corpse is hardly haunted anymore, at least not in a purposeful way. Kozmotis didn’t think planting seeds of dreams and hope would completely heal the veil between the lair and this plane, but it did help stem the flow.

The form of the Sister of Flight is visible enough underneath everything. This one is strangely intact, just overgrown to the point that their face has been warped beyond recognition by vines and erosion, the one hand tucked to their body growing its fingers right into its chin.

His skin prickles as he looks at the other, extending hand, stretching in front of them for something they’ll never be able to reach. Their face looks towards the same, doomed direction. It’s somehow more horrible to look at than the one without a head. At least he could pretend that was simply an overzealous tree; this one cannot be mistaken for anything except what it is.

“Let’s leave this well enough alone, hm?” he says to Sanderson.

The Sandman doesn’t wait for the end of the sentence to vigorously nod. He heads in the direction of the spire, flipping a dark cloak over himself to stifle his glow until the right moment. Kozmotis starts after him, not getting ten yards before a groaning crack—or a cracking groan—rises up from behind him. The hairs at the back of his neck stand on end, and for a second, he debates turning around. But he fights through the fear instinct, knowing that seeing the truth will erase it all.

He spins around, a little faster than he means to, sloppily drawing his sword so that he has to wrestle the last few inches from the scabbard like a rookie on his first day of training. He holds it at the ready, a shake working its way into his limbs.

 _Fear itself…_ he reminds himself, taking a deep breath. He releases it, pushing the energy out of every square inch of his body until he relaxes. _Nothing to it._

“Kozmotis?” Sanderson calls. He waves him onward. “I think they know we’re here.”

“I think so, too.” He sheathes his sword. “Well, if that’s what we’re walking into, then it’s a good thing we’re armed.”

Sanderson nods, unconsciously laying a hand to the pouch of mixture pellets and shards at his side. They continue in silence. Kozmotis glances back at the wooden Sister one last time, still unnerved at the warped face trapped in a perpetual screech as they try to guard against whatever was in front of them.

*************

With still no word from Selene, you let yourself wander Ganderly’s halls, wondering if you should just go back to Big Root and dive into Ombric’s library again. Though, the whole point of coming to Ganderly for a bit was to get away from his odd line of questioning about your notes. He’s smart, you have to give him that, but when he gets talking, there’s no stopping the old wizard.

You and Kidra walk by some of the large windows overlooking the sea that comes up to the edge of Ganderly. It barely glistens in the moonless night, the only reflections coming from the lanterns in the library. Not too far out, the water meets the horizon in a singular wall of black. Out of curiosity, you lift up your lens and cover your other eye. There’s a little more depth to the shadows when you do that, but for the most part, your ability to distinguish multiple layers of shadows is gone. Koz could probably see better than you can anymore.

Fine with you, if it means not having to worry about getting consumed by shadows. But you do miss the ability. Just a little. Kind of.

Something knocks against the window in front of you, making you jump. You shove the lens down, glance around to make sure nobody’s watching you mess up, and then check the window. A branch shakes in the wind outside. You sigh and shake your head at yourself. Then the branch reaches up and taps the window again, bending along itself unnaturally.

You yelp and jump back this time, bringing your magic to one hand and summoning a pellet of mixed magic from your quiver with the other. Out of the shadows, a familiar glob of iridescence latches onto the branch and then leaps onto the window, sticking to it like a spider web.

Very faintly, muffled from behind the glass, you hear, _“My knight!”_

You rush up, placing your hand over where the iridescence sticks, searching for any way to open the window. Unfortunately there isn’t one, so you wave to Selene and point towards the balcony. You just push off the wall when you hear her again.

_“They say they are here for you all.”_

New, familiar panic swallows your heart as you halt, looking back at her for just a second.

“Can you help us?” you ask, pressing your ear to the glass again. In the background, you can hear the rumblings of the Ganderly citizens getting louder. “Can you just meet me on the balcony real quick?”

Suddenly, the treehouse lurches to one side. The movement throws you backwards into Kidra, who’d been tossed into a teetering bookshelf. A few picture book hardcovers rain down, the corners catching you on the head so that you see stars for a moment. Katherine screams your name.

“Where are you?!”

Ganderly rocks to the side again, and the bookshelf collapses to its side, taking a few more with it like dominoes. You manage to pull yourself onto Kidra’s back, and they haul themself over the overturned shelves. Katherine emerges from the tilted hallway, clinging to Kailash’s neck, Jack at the saddle.

“What’s going on?” you yell.

“I don’t know,” is the terrifying reply.

The third time Ganderly tilts, you hear a chiming, crinkling sound. Then a scraping sound like stone on wood erupts, and the far wall of the room rips upward. As it rises and crumbles back down, you see a monolith rising to the side of the treehouse. It flickers for a moment. Once, twice, three times. And then its core lights up a violet-magenta, revealing the rest of the crystalline structure around it and the illuminated grins of the shadows perching on every point.

*************

Finally, the spire comes into view. Kozmotis is the first to see the jutting tip through the dense canopy. Sanderson is right behind him, immediately halting for a second and glancing around the area before shoving him off the direct deer track of a trail.

“All right,” he says. “It’s well within our sights, so that means the shadows definitely know we’re approaching.”

They press back-to-back, checking their surroundings. Nothing like everything going according to plan only to foolishly lose it right before it starts. But there they are. At the edges of his vision, Kozmotis can see the vague, swirling darkness darting between the deeper shadows of the trees, trying to pass themselves off as shuddering branches on a breeze.

“They’re surrounding us.” He takes a sharper inhale of breath than he means to.

Sanderson snorts. “Don’t lose your composure now.”

The goodwill the quips generate fades as a burst of depressive energy from up ahead spreads over the area. They both shudder as it passes over them, and Kozmotis reaches for his sword. He resists pulling it out again; it’s not the right time, not the right level of chaos just yet. He settles for trailing a few short tethers from his other hand.

At the sudden wave, however, the lurking shadows decide that enough is enough. They pour over the gnarled roots and sift off of the twisting vines, running thin enough to create ankle-deep mist that curls around them in a wide arc. The only way through without touching the shadows is now directly towards their intended goal.

They move in sync, one moving forward and the other completing the motion in mirror opposite. It’s slow going, but eventually they move beyond the final treeline and into the clearing housing the entrance to the spire. Compared to the others, it’s quite small, barely five stories tall and hardly a looming landmark. But the atmosphere more than makes up for the less than impressive size, as the air chokes the both of them with thick hopelessness and squirming doubt to make their steps heavy, dragging as if through water.

Sanderson takes a glance up at him, a message clear in his wide eyes: _This had better work, or I will end you._

“Koz! Mo! Tis!”

The Nightmare Man steps out of the dark mist behind them and swoops around until it encloses them in its bubbling trail. It raises one too-long clawed hand up and reaches out in a perverted handshake, giggling like it’s gargling blood. Kozmotis steps back a bit, wary of how close he’s getting to the barrier, suddenly too aware of his heart rate and stiff legs and breathing to let them work subconsciously.

It nods to Sanderson as well, saying, “And! And Sandman.”

”Just in time.” It reveals a wide-sharp smile and throws its claws out. “Right on time.” The fearlings part at either side of the clearing, and that odd, creaking moan from earlier starts again. “For the show!”

Sanderson gasps. Kozmotis turns in time to see the fearlings close in even further. They surround the area, chittering and laughing just off-pace from each other, in a way that reminds him of the white noise drone of cicadas on a silent summer day. The walls of shadow reach up high enough to block off any retreat.

 _No matter,_ he thinks. Just in the last year, they've been through worse scrapes. Just since last Halloween, he himself had put them all through worse.

_And remember: Burgess has not fallen._

He tries to ignore the wave of empty cold that rushes through him, like Pole water on the hottest day. He wrestles with his mind, reminds himself over and over that fear is what he makes of it. That the fearlings can only thrive on irrational thoughts and unchecked feelings. But with so much dark energy surrounding him, with no way for the moon or stars or sun to reach them, victory seems a far-flung wish away.


	94. Regroup

Before Kozmotis can react, Sanderson plunges his hand into his pocket and drags it out again. The glow from the signal stone peeks through his fingers for a fraction of a second before he covers it in dreamsand and punches right through the Nightmare Man’s barrier. The abomination shrieks and writhes, form bubbling and boiling. It retracts itself and darts back until it curls around the spire itself. The piercing crystal glows where the Nightmare Man touches it, magenta energy sinking from the crystal up into the entity’s claws.

At least they’re not surrounded anymore, though the chittering of approaching fearlings and their inevitable retaliation has him back on edge. Kozmotis throws out his arms, silver streaming from his fingertips and weaving together in a large ball around him and Sanderson. Sanderson, meanwhile, disposes of his cloak and concentrates until he glows so bright that Kozmotis has to close his eyes.

“Now!”

Kozmotis drops the shield, watching the bright golden light blast around them through his eyelids, even as he raises his arms to protect his face from catching the golden dust. When he opens them again, there’s a neat circle around them, about ten yards in radius, one that’s about to shrink again if they don’t move in time.

Kozmotis uses one hand to launch tethers that grab Sanderson around his waist, yanking him just out of reach of the fastest shadows. His other tosses out a coiling stream that latches on to a jutting ledge nearer to the spire, but just out of range of the Nightmare Man still clinging to the crystal. He concentrates, and they shorten on command, dragging him and Sanderson out of the middle of the clearing and onto a vantage point.

“How much longer?!” he yells, summoning ever sliver of silver he can muster under the circumstances. He carefully pops his sword out and directs a few strands to curl around it, another few covering the Sandman, who watches the stone in his hand.

Kozmotis slices through a few of the braver shadows that leap his direction, swinging the rapier in a wide enough arc to cut them to ribbons. The fearlings scream, and it sounds so much like Rina’s wails that he hesitates for a moment, wondering if there can’t be another way right now.

And then another wave darts under the blade, reaching their fangs and claws out to Sanderson.

Kozmotis forces those thoughts out of his head and pierces the shadows with thin strings, pushing a few of them back mostly unharmed, though one or two dissipate on the spot, shrieking as they go.

“How! Much! Longer!” he yells again.

“Ah!” Sanderson finally replies. A soft blinking pulses in his peripherals. “They’re in position! We just need to beat the shadows back!”

“Good!”

At that, Kozmotis lashes out at the incoming wave of fearlings. He coils several tethers together, like when his partner had mixed his and Jack’s powers. He sweeps the new rope up, cracking it in the air like a bullwhip. The fearlings halt at the noise, but push through regardless of the danger.

Fine. If they insist.

He sweeps the rope in a wide arc shoving most of the fearlings to the side, swinging the rapier down to get the stragglers. He wills his mind numb as the chittering screeches start up again, wills tunnel vision into his eyes to focus only on getting to the spire and knocking that creature from its perch.

The same creature hissing and calling out to its own army, summoning even more reinforcements to its side. Not ideal, but useful, in any sense.

Kozmotis follows the streams of incoming fearlings and nightmares back to their sources. Almost all of them seem to be located in the shade of the cliff, between layers of crooked rocks and stained sediment.

“Cover me!” he yells. Sanderson instantly swoops in front of him, flashing his own whips and summoning a halo of golden pellets that he sends into the nearby fearlings with a whistling flurry.

Meanwhile, Kozmotis reaches into his own pocket and drags out his own signal stone. He carefully calibrates it as instructed, and then clenches it with all of his might and willpower. A haze settles over his eyes for a second, like wearing a pair of goggles that don’t quite fit. He flicks his eyes toward the veil breaks along the cliffside a few times, before the haze recedes again. He blinks rapidly, taking a moment to rub his eyes free of the irritation. Hopefully, that’s enough. Once again, he summons his threads, calling to Sanderson to let him know his work is done.

Back to back, slowly moving ever closer to the base of the spire, and once they draw parallel, they split to cover each side.

 _It’s taking longer than it should,_ is a sudden thought that passes over his mind. _This isn’t going to work, it’s already failed, the shadows are onto us—_

 _Calm,_ he orders himself. _Shake away the false doubts. Believe._

Between his next inhale and exhale, a burst of explosions go off around the cliff. Half of the fearlings surrounding them skid to a halt to look at the sudden commotion. The Nightmare Man itself faces the cliff for a moment before darting over to examine one of the explosion sites.

It leans in a little too close and, regrettably, only _almost_ gets half its being torn to shreds as a volley of thorny vines erupts from the area that once housed a rift in the veil. It manages to break free of the vine that latches around its body, claws leaving a sweeping arc of magenta in their wake. Another few tendrils breach the rock, followed by large, archaic flowers and plant stalks until the cliffside is a veritable bouquet of exotic plants. Sanderson keeps up his fight, giving only a moment’s warning before he lets off another bursting sphere of gold magic. And when the dust clears, the Nightmare Man stands before a dwindled defense force, impotently trying to call forth more waves of shadows from the plugged holes.

“We’re better prepared this time,” Kozmotis pants, raising his tethers higher, positioning his rapier like a scorpion’s tail.

The Nightmare Man doesn’t change expressions, as much as it ever could. Instead, it raises its claws, shaking as violet lightning arcs between each of them. Kozmotis and Sanderson draw up their defenses, waiting. The Nightmare Man lurches back, aiming to strike.

A bright streak of light bursts from the wall of the cliff, slicing across the Nightmare Man’s back. There’s a horrible gurgling as the lightning energy fizzles out and the creature shudders for a moment. Two boomerangs catch it across the head and back as well, bouncing off and returning to a new tunnel in the rocks. The light swoops back around to cut across most of the rest of the fearlings left in the clearing, dissipating the crowds and leaving the few on the fringes to chitter in their own fear.

Nightlight swings back around to where he shot from, landing next to the rabbit and a growing number of stone eggs spreading out around them. The rabbit catches his weapons and looks over to Kozmotis and Sanderson and nods. Mostly to the Sandman. Exclusively to him, honestly. Both groups press in on the stunned Nightmare Man.

The monster regains its movement bit by bit, until it’s finally able to finish screaming in pain and double over. The spire flashes a few times, jagged attempts at more lightning trying to complete an arc between it and the creature. But despite the energy flowing from its claws into its body, the Nightmare Man still heaves and writhes. It stumbles around, nearly crashing into either party.

It manages to find its way to the opposite side of the clearing, out of the shadows of the cliff before it turns around, a blot of shadow melting from its form and spreading out onto the ground. Another glob sloughs off from its body, splatting to the ground. And then it laughs. Kozmotis and the Guardians leap back as the shadowy globs lash out, breaking apart into a dozen smaller fearlings that ultimately sink to the earth and dissolve.

“So sorry. Not sorry. Feeding on bewilderment and lies!” The visage of the dying Nightmare Man breaks down, revealing it to be nothing but hundreds of fearlings working together to take on its form. “Surprised? Afraid? Better be or better prepare to be.”

The remaining fearlings at the edges of the clearing close in again, their ranks more robust than they’d seemed only a moment earlier. The rabbit directs his eggs to fan out, and Sanderson and Nightlight flare their glows. Kozmotis turns back to the quickly breaking false Nightmare Man, lanky form now boiling and ripping with the unnatural grins of the fearlings and their jerky movements. He raises the sword and tethers again, sending as many through the creatures as he can in one fell swoop. With a strangled whimper, the leading fearlings die, soaking into the soil before evaporating into the stagnant air. The others remain, laughing and swiping out at the four of them.

 _Something else is happening._ The realization dawns on Kozmotis like a sailor waking up to a red sky. _They’re done with this spire for now. They’re planning something else._

“Boogeyman! Pay attention!”

Kozmotis looks up in time for one of the rabbit’s boomerangs to ward off a tendril of darkness about to strike his face. He grabs his sword from the mess of tethers and readies himself as the fearlings waiting in the wings pounce on their little group.

At once, Sanderson and Nightlight summon their lights together and beat back the perimeter. The second wave of shadows right after that plow on through, leaving Kozmotis to dash and dance around the waves while also trying not to cross paths with the rabbit’s weapons that he swears are aiming right for him.

They push the line back, farther out around the clearing and cliff. Still, more fearlings appear, either from the nourished shadows the incumbent fearlings create or from well-hidden rifts. But numbers are only ever one part of a battle, and if the shadows do have something else planned—something far more wicked—well… They may not be inherently strategic, but they are smart enough for basic logistics. Indeed, as the egg statues press on even more, the fearlings mostly stay low and feint a swipe here and there, letting them all know that they may be driven back, but they will linger as long as it takes.

Kozmotis backs up into the Guardians, who also face outward at their opponents. He yells, “Something’s up with them!”

“Nah!” the rabbit replies. “Nah, they’re just tired, ain’t they?” He pauses for a moment. “So what is it and how do we stop it?”

“I don’t know, I’m not part of their hive-mind anymore!”

“Surely you have _some_ idea?” Sanderson jumps in. “What could they possibly gain from not hoarding this site?”

“Maybe—”

He’s the strategist, not a mind-reader! He can barely flip through peoples’ emotions anymore. As he scrambles through his time with the fearlings, trying to see if they’re possibly following any of the plans laid down, the lines swell up again, and the hoarse cackling of the fearlings rises.

“What’s the answer, Boogeyman?!”

A whole portion of the fearlings to their left swoops in, tripping up the few egg warriors that had been holding steady. They don’t get too far, as Nightlight darts right up to them and slices through the wave, half of it dissipating, and the other half retreating. Though that half moves back and forth along the perimeter like a waiting tiger.

“Stop fighting, you two!” Sanderson yells, coughing at the strain on his voice. “Stop before you power them enough to overtake us.”

Kozmotis and the rabbit glare at each other. He sends enough fire from his eyes to assure the rabbit that this is far from over and that he’s welcome to try again under safer circumstances. The rabbit grits his teeth and goes on guard again. Kozmotis does the same, searching for some sort of weakness in the still rising tide of shadows. He searches so hard he can practically hear the blood vessels in his eyes exploding one by one. Then, he catches the rabbit’s ears twitching rapidly. And then new violent noises get closer and closer and closer.

“Oh, what now?” the rabbit spits.

The fearlings surrounding them turn their attentions to the rumblings as well, some of the chittering fading into the distance, only to become full-fledged shrieks in the next instant. Another roar goes up, but as it peaks, and as the sounds of a hundred more join it, all four of them inhale in relief.

“Yah-hah!”

North barrels through the line of shadows, twisting as he catches a few, grabbing fearlings on his whirling blades. Shortly behind him, a contingent of yetis burst through the line, swiping and stabbing and bludgeoning wherever they can reach until they form up alongside the egg statues to lend their aid. They shove the shadows back significantly farther this time, and the fearlings lose so many of their numbers that full gaps appear in their wall. That doesn’t mean they’re down for the count, but it’s a relief.

North jogs over to the four of them, panting as he holds out a teleportation globe to the rabbit.

“Ganderly is under assault!” He waves away all of the impulsive questions they start to ask. “No time! I will stay here and guard spire with Sandy and troops. You go! Hurry!”

The rabbit nearly fumbles the damned thing, spluttering and cursing. But North’s steely eyes glare out from his bushy eyebrows, snarl visible under his rumpled beard, and the rabbit just nods. He tosses the globe towards the clearer section, shouting, “Ganderly!” Before Kozmotis can object, Nightlight yanks him through the portal at Mach One. As the warp envelopes them all, the form of askew shelves and splintered wood starts to rise up in front of them. But before they can land safely in the library, a bolt of violet static zaps through the warp, shoving the party through a different exit. Nightlight drops Kozmotis from a dozen feet in the air on the other side.

Once Kozmotis regains his bearings, he, the rabbit, and Nightlight look down from a distant cliffside, watching as the otherwise peaceful hidden island is overrun by shadow after shadow. The sparking presence of the largest spire they’ve come across thus far—torn right up through the treehouse’s side—looms over everything, especially the various Raconturks littering the ground and branches, screaming in vain at the tsunami before them. With every coordinated twitch, every anticipated move, the stormy sky above them gathers into a spiraling cloud that reaches down towards the tip of the spire itself.

Kozmotis pulls away from himself for a moment, a sudden, warped vision of Pitch Black watching this happen as previously planned. They’d done what he could not; they found the library, and they found their way into it despite all of its defenses. He’s proud, so proud of the accomplishment. And then Kozmotis immediately shoves that pride away from his mind, disgusted at himself for even humoring what could have been—what almost was, if not for the hand of fate intervening.

“Bloody mother…” the rabbit says.

Nightlight had paused for one second and exactly one second. Just as Kozmotis and the rabbit’s brains catch up to the carnage, the spectral spirit bolts down, across the water, and zips from point to point. His slashing light clashes with arcs of violet sparks. Once, twice, three times he leaves a trail as he lashes out, leaving bright flashes in the wake of the attacks.

That fourth time, however, the real Nightmare Man rises up from the gestalt personally and fakes a grab with one claw. Nightlight doesn’t move in time. His distant form flickers as he’s thrown back. And then a black tendril snakes out, shimmering like an oil slick, and it snaps him up right before the Nightmare Man can close its hand around him. As his light disappears, the dark sea shifts around Ganderly, and thousands of hollow eyes turn to watch the cliffside where Kozmotis and the rabbit stand petrified.

“Bloody fuck!”

The rabbit glances around himself for a moment before leaping down to a lower shelf along the cliff. He leaps down about twenty feet before he stiffens and looks back up.

“Boogeyman!” he yells. “Get over here!”

Kozmotis looks over the edge at the furious Guardian. One hand starts to summon a bunch of silver, but his other goes to the locket around his neck.

“Boogeyman, if you don’t get down here, I swear I’ll kill you myself!”

The clouds are too thick to see through. No moon shines here, nor is there any way for Selene to watch. Thousands more eyes open and turn and churn in the waters and around the base of the tree. Their laughter echoes up to him, surrounding him and scraping its way under his skin until he has to grind his teeth against the overwhelming sensation.

He takes his hand off the locket, placing it below, on his chest. The familiar, warm sensation flares up. All of the bonding tethers feel the same superficially, but each one has its own, separate tone to it. This one—a whole braided cord—overflows with excitement, joy, and love. He concentrates, sending it out to connect with his partner, a calm silver line in the sky amid so much chaos.

It connects. A small jolt of fear and relief travels through the connection, and he can feel his partner relax into it. For only a moment.

A blot in the sea before them rises, creating a hill of eyes and teeth that strikes out to the cord. There’s an undercurrent of screaming as the shadows come into contact with it, and Kozmotis concentrates harder to keep the bond strong. But another part of the horde snaps up and hooks around the threads. Kozmotis claps his hands to his ears as a horrible static echoes up through the interrupted connection. He tries to maintain control of the magic, but there’s too much tension, too much static, too much—

A _twang_ reverberates up the connection to him, making him reel back like he’d been snapped with a rubber band. He shakes his head free of the pain and looks out in time to see the tether fade, and the wild shadows sink back down into the water.

“One last chance, Boogeyman! Get over here and help me make a path!”

“We can’t fight _this!”_ Kozmotis looks down at him, wondering if he’s gone completely mad. The rabbit takes out his other weapon and winds up. Kozmotis backs up a step, calling again, “We cannot fight out way through all of these shadows ourselves! We either need to wait for North and Sanderson to join us or—”

One boomerang grazes his temple, clocking the hand he brings up to his head on its way back around. Kozmotis stumbles back a pace, then trips over himself to avoid the other boomerang as it threatens to crush his nose. The rabbit leaps back over the edge of the cliff, and before Kozmotis can say another word, he slams into his chest, pinning him to the ground. The rabbit drops his weapon and decks Kozmotis across the face.

 _“Give me one reason,”_ he snarls, bringing his fist back and snapping it forward again. “Give me one godforsaken reason why I shouldn’t kill you here and now and save my friends myself!”

There’s another thud against Kozmotis’ face, and the ringing in his ears stutters to a restart over and over again as the strikes keep coming. Finally, his vision clears, and he watches the rabbit panting over him, bloodied knuckles poised for one more strike. Kozmotis gurgles for a moment, fighting against the pain and the paw clutching his collar tight enough to choke. The rabbit shakes him, slamming his head against the rocky ground.

“Come on, Boogeyman!”

“You can’t…” he manages to cough out. “You can’t fight through them on your own. Nor can we push through just ourselves. They took down Nightlight, the only one of us with magic in true opposition to the shadows.”

The rabbit hangs there, muscles taut, gaze furious and focusing only on him. At the mention of Nightlight, however, a dot of worry darts through him, and his grip loosens slightly. Kozmotis slowly brings one hand up to the locket and summons the thin, silver string connecting him and his daughter. The rabbit clutches tighter again and raises his fist in warning.

“Either we wait who knows how long for North and Sanderson to tidy up the other spire and _maybe_ we can make a dent in the shadows as we search for our friends and allies. Or I can seek out my daughter to help us.”

“She doesn’t want anythin’ to do with you. She won’t help.”

“She’s the only one who stand a chance at dispelling the clouds and letting the Man In The Moon or Selene a chance to aid us. We have to try.”

He pummels him one more time, but as Kozmotis shakes his head free of dizziness, he notices that the rabbit’s let him go. He rakes his claws over his head and scrapes down his ears, eyes closed as he lets out a frustrated scream. There’s a rumbling below the cliff, a chatter of chitters as the fearlings take notice.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can—”

“I ain’t lettin’ you out of my sight!” The rabbit digs his claws into Kozmotis’ shoulder, pointing a claw on his other hand between his eyes. “If anything happens to them… If _anything—"_

“Don’t act like you’re the only one with loved ones at stake here,” he growls in reply, voice catching on a crack of distress. “My partner’s in there, too.”

The rabbit takes one last look out to Ganderly. “Take us to Mother Nature.”

Kozmotis closes his eyes and summons all of his willpower. He reaches out through the thin tether—less frayed than it was six months ago, but it is still a tentative shambles—and when he can feel her presence, he grips the rabbit’s arm tight and will them both through the bond. There’s a familiar pulling sensation, and then the world compresses around them.


	95. Second Visitation

You only have time to process the basics of what’s happening before everything moves at once. Katherine yells for you to get down and lets loose a shout that rattles the remaining windows. Kidra spooks, yelping at the noise as they rear and spin on their hind legs. You nearly get bounced off into an avalanche of books, but your grip holds in their short mane.

Whistling, you yank back, trying to wrestle them under control. They buck, bleating wildly, thrashing their claws everywhere until they get one of them hooked through a wooden board. You lean down and whistle their heel command right into their ear, slipping off their back. That manages to stun them as they cough and twitch, pressing their knuckles against their ear.

“Sorry,” you whisper to them, reaching over to their caught claw.

There’s another powerful shout, and it flings you against the wall with such immense force that you don’t have time to react before impaling your leg on Kidra. You scream, and bring your fist up to bite so you don’t draw too much attention to yourself, but it’s far too late. A swath of darkness rises up over the open edge of the library. Dozens of hollow eyes blink back at you, and another dozen toothy maws open into giggling grins.

Dragging a pellet from your quiver and summoning your magic to your other hand, you ready yourself for when they strike. But the fearlings just sway there, pretending to lash out at you a few times until you’re on edge trying to anticipate their real move. After awhile, the swaying becomes almost hypnotic, and your eyes relax as they stare into the nothingness slowly growing in your vision. Beside you, Kidra whines and huffs, pressing into you as the shadows start to move in and surround you.

They nudge at you, and when you don’t move, they bite.

“Augh!”

The quick snap of teeth around your flesh jolts you our of whatever trance the shadows were putting you in, and you toss the pellet at the mass. It explodes in a blinding flash of metallic blue-green, a chaser of iridescence cauterizing the hole left in the tendril. The shadows squirm, almost coming apart from each other, and they jolt away from you. You take the opportunity to carefully un-stab your leg and use your uninjured one to kick at the board Kidra’s claw is stick in. It comes loose from the wall, and you finish wedging them free. They run their tongue over their beak and you give them a hesitant pat in the face plate before hauling yourself over them and whistling for them to get over the barricade of bookcases in your way.

As Kidra ascends the pile, you just see the goose’s tail feathers disappearing down the hallway. Biting against the pain in your leg ( _I'm immortal, this will heal. I'm immortal, this will heal,_ you say to yourself. _But damn if it doesn't hurt!_ ), you hunch over Kidra and direct them toward the others.

“Katherine! Jack!” you call once you’re within sigh again. Jack lifts himself from the saddle where he’d apparently been laying flat a second ago, staff flaring. He sighs in relief when he sees you and lets the magic fade into the bark.

“Follow us!” he calls back, hunkering down again and choking up on his staff. “I’ll cover the rear!”

Katherine lets shout after shout of power words, blasting every doorway wide enough for the small train to go through. You cling to Kidra with your legs, biting back the pain as you reach back and grab as many pellets as you can hold, arm at the ready to throw if something comes your way.

And there is something after you. It hangs outside, rattling the walls as you pass by. As you pass another set of large windows, the Nightmare Man comes into plain view. It scrapes its long claws over the panes of glass, making you and Jack cringe and grind your teeth against the noise.

Suddenly, Kailash halts in the middle of the hallway flapping and honking as Katherine pulls on her reins.

“Cover your ears!” she shouts to you and Jack.

Next thing you know, she stands up in her stirrups. She twists her torso, mutters a long phrase, and takes the deepest breath in you’ve ever seen her take. And then she holds it. You and Jack glance at each other and clasp your hands over your heads. As soon as the Nightmare Man hovers in front of the window, Katherine releases all of the pent-up energy.

The shout itself is in a language you don’t recognize, as most of them are, but it also sounds the least like a language in general. The force of the shout leaves her lips first. It shatters the glass, tossing it outwards into the Nightmare Man’s body. The creature hisses and flinches, but it manages to shake out most of the slivers. A second later, though, as the sound catches up to the force, it snaps still in the air. Ripples of vibration course up and down the Nightmare Man’s body, paralyzing it.

Katherine shoots backwards into the opposite wall, head crashing into the wall with a sickening _crack._ Jack darts over to help her up, shaking from the small bit of residual sound that caught him. You swerve over and watch the Nightmare Man, and beyond it, the untold masses of shadows. As the vague whistling in your own ears dies down, it’s replaced by your pulse moving faster and faster as the sheer scale of the attack force makes itself known to you. Where once the water met the sky in a sheet of nighttime dark, now an infinity of fearlings hover there. Chittering. Waiting. Waving at you to join them.

“Come on.”

Katherine’s voice is so low and hoarse, it takes Jack tapping your shoulder for you to realize she said anything. You back up, still not content to look away from the creature in case it starts moving again. Katherine leans on Jack and holds her other hand out to the blank wall in front of her. She clears her throat and mutters something, interrupted but a small coughing fit. She steadies herself and tries again, and this time, a light traces itself into the wall, drawing a rectangle into the wood, glyphs and symbols decorating its edges. Barely as soon as it settle down, she shoves against the new door, sliding it open and ushering you, Jack, and the animals inside.

You limp inside as fast as you can, just as the death rattle growl of the Nightmare Man starts up again, laced with a fury you don’t want to face right now. Katherine scoots in at the last second and shoves the door closed, whispering a few more words until the rectangle traces itself in the opposite direction.

Katherine leans her back against the wall. You follow suit, the panic catching up and shaking your limbs so hard you can’t stand upright anymore. You slip and drop to your bottom, hissing as your leg burns from its wound, and as the exhaustion haunting you ever since you used the Sources slams against your mind and body.

“We should be safe for a moment,” Katherine whispers. She tries to clear her throat a few more times, rubbing it and panting and swallowing.

“What the heck happened?” Jack says, spinning circles around the hexagonal chamber. He runs his hands over the walls, leaning his ear in. A light dusting of snow being to fall from his wake, and you shiver and clutch your cloak tighter over you.

“They found it.” Katherine stares into the distance. Kailash lets out a soft hiss and lays down as out of the way as possible. She tucks her huge beak under Katherine’s arms, and she absentmindedly pets it. “They finally found Ganderly.”

“And punched a dang spire up through it.” Jack’s toes touch the ground for a second before he bolts up again, gasping. “Tooth!”

“Oh, shit,” you say, rubbing your head. “Oh fuck… Where was she before this happened?”

“Practice room. Probably,” Katherine coughs.

She wanders over to one of the walls and puts her hand to it. After a moment, she shakes her head and moves to the next wall. Then the next. At the fourth wall, she nods and hums, whispering a few words. Another door forms, but as she slides it open, Jack stops her from exiting.

He slides it open enough to peek his head out, checking each end of the hallway. You dig your fingers into the wall as much as you can, trying to haul yourself up.

“Jack,” you say. He leans back in and you hold your hand out. “Take a few of these.”

He accepts the pellets and lifts himself onto a silent wind into the disturbingly quiet hallway. As he flies out, you take a look for yourself. The small, square windows set high in the walls might as well be picture frames of solid black paintings. There are lamp sconces on either side of the wall every fifteen feet. Most of them burn with a yellow flame, though a few are off or too low to make a dent. The shadows haven’t seemed to reach this part of Ganderly yet, but you can hear the legions just outside.

You try to take a step out, but pain shoots up to your knee. You hiss and stumble backwards into Kidra’s body and Kailash’s outstretched wing, ending up on your ass again. There’s only a single, dull lamp lighting this chamber, but you can see well enough to check your leg out. Kidra’s claw pierced through the front of your knee, just under the kneecap. There’s a matching exit wound on the inside of your knee.

“Does this look super bad to you?” You shuffle over Katherine. She leans down and carefully rotates your leg. Finally, she shakes her head.

“Looks painful, but it’ll probably snap back together in the next twenty-four hours. Might be sore for the next week or two.”

“Cool. Cool… What about you?”

She rubs her throat again, and then the back of her head. “I haven’t had to use that kind of magic in at least a century. I should be fine soon enough. Please close the door.”

You move close enough to slide the door all the way closed. With the outline still in place, however, you can hear what’s on the other side of it. So far, nothing but the low hum of eager shadows and creaking walls. Good enough for now. Sinking back, you watch Katherine drag out her signal stone and communicator. She looks at the stone, wraps her hand around it. It starts to glow.

“Wait!” you say. She stops holding it so tight and the glow fades. “If you activate that, mine and Jack’s will respond, too. They might see him.”

She closes her eyes and lightly taps her head back against the wall, letting out a quiet “Ow…” when the tender part of her skull hits it. She then starts fiddling with the communicator.

“North, please answer…” she whispers. Then she coughs again. After a few of them, she hands the communicator to you and indicates for you to talk.

The static fades in and out, like a car radio between towns. You hold it close, though, and eventually you can hear something on the other end.

“Hello? Katherine, is that you?”

“North!” you cry. “North can you hear me okay?”

“You are faint and full of static!” His voice warbles. “—eak up!”

“North, Ganderly is under attack from the shadows! We need help ASAP!”

There’s a moment of silence, and then a faint, flat, “What?”

“Ganderly! Under attack!” You glance towards the door, hoping nothing’s traveling down that hallway just yet. “Send help!”

A feedback whine blasts out of the communicator, and you drop it in favor of covering your ears. It rolls over to Katherine. She snatches it up and flicks a button, causing the whole thing to go dead.

“Is Jack on his way?” she asks. She takes the teleporter from her belt and holds it. You slide the door open just enough to get a sliver of a look. No icy blue light, nor the sound of his snark or the quiet hush of wind. You shrug. Another ten minutes goes by before you check again. Still nothing.

“Let me get a better look,” you say. “Just down the hallway. See if there’s a window I can look out of.”

“Be careful.”

You grab onto Kidra for stability and slide into the hallway. There’s an intersection in the direction Jack flew. You hobble your way down to it, swirling a few pellets around your palm to quell half your anxiety.

Five feet from the end of the hallway, you pause, feeling your way to the edge of the wall with your fingers. You check to your right; more empty hallways filled with patches of flickering lamplight. Leaning around the corner, you check the left.

A curling dark patch filters through a crack in one of the tall windows lining the hall. You slam yourself back around the corner, holding your hand over your mouth and trying to hyperventilate as quietly as possible. Something bright flashes outside, bright enough to light up the dense cloud cover that suddenly appeared, jagged arcs of the violet magic following quickly after.

There’s a rustling around the corner to the left. Far enough away that you can tell it’s not about to turn the corner, but close enough that you can tell it’s fully inside. You take a deep breath and hold it, slowly looking around the corner again.

The flowing black is there again, sifting into multiple doorways at once. You hold your hand over the quiver and summon your bow. Stringing it, you summon an arrow tipped with a whole lot of dreamsand and slowly move from behind the corner to get a good shot.

As the slithering black dips out of a doorway and into the hall again, a second set of white and violet flashes light up the area. The globular form bunches together, a hissing noise like a cat rippling out. And an undertone of iridescence, like an oil spill, shimmers across it.

“Selene!” You clap your hand to your mouth. That whisper was so much louder than you’d meant. One end of the iridescence points your way, however, and in another instant darts over.

_“There you are. I thought you had perished or fallen.”_

“Not quite. Got a bit of magic on our side.” You swallow and look around. “You don’t happen to know where my other friends are, do you? Jack went off to find Tooth, and it’s been awhile—”

 _“Are you referring to the cold sprite? I thought I spotted him not too long ago.”_ She points herself upwards.

“Great! … Any chance you could bring him here?” You motion down the hall. “Me and Katherine are tucked away for the time being, but we have an escape plan if you could help.”

Selene drifts around your shoulders, never quite draping across you, but still matching the curves of your neck and head. She hums and one of the ends darts a few ways. Finally, she speaks again.

 _“I have my own concerns. These clouds are too magical to go through again. I am cut off from my source.”_ The cloud of iridescence globs ripples. _“I am reduced to this for now.”_

“Why’d you come down at all?”

Selene circles again, hums again, snakes around the air and back again. The one end you’ve come to think of as the “head” of this form twitches low and peeks back up at you a few times, as if embarrassed.

_“I said I am drawn to the shadow beast. I have, in fact, spoken to it.”_

Your insides run cold, and you reach out and place your hand in the middle of the globules. They slip between your fingers like silk. An air of longing and impermanence comes over you.

“What did it say?”

A terrifying screech bounces between the walls, rattling the fragile windows until they crack and slump. Kidra bleats and yelps and growls, dancing around and trying to swipe at Selene. You shove your hands around her, trying to hold her carefully, but it’s like hugging water.

“Shh!” You say, glancing around. “Selene stop before they hear!”

The shriek cuts off, and you hear the approach of running footsteps behind you. A small bead flies into your sight, and in the fraction of a second before it explodes, you recognize it as one of the pellets. Katherine is behind you, reeling back from tossing one at Selene, and winding up with another. The first one explodes and Selene shudders, screaming again.

“Stop!” you cry, brushing your way through the lingering magic residue. “Katherine it’s Selene!”

You summon your own magic to your fingertips and hold it up to the iridescent cloud. Katherine lowers her arm a bit, intrigued, and as she steps a bit closer, she lowers it completely.

“Sorry,” she whispers. “The screaming…”

You nod. Luckily, Selene doesn’t writhe for too long, and you’re able to soothe her into full sentences again.

_“The beast’s words don’t translate. It is raw, familiar hunger.”_

“Well…” You search for the words. “Well, we’ll have to deal with that later. Selene, can you please at least find Jack and Tooth so we can teleport out of here and regroup?”

The iridescent mass nods one of its ends, and she swoops around the corner and through the cracked glass from which she came. You and Katherine help each other back to the hexagonal room and go back to waiting. This time, you keep the door cracked, just enough to hear the sounds of the fearlings rise and fall. Through the high, square windows, you see a third clash of the bright light and violet lightning, but this time the sky is overwhelmed with the purple for several seconds after the flash.

Then the sky goes completely dark. And then the rumblings turn into laughter.

You scoot closer to Katherine, huddling with her and her goose and Kidra. Not for warmth. Not even for comfort. Just to ward off the looming atmosphere of silent isolation. Being alone together, you’ve realized in recent months, is a far better prospect than being alone with nothing.

But not long after the laughing starts and turns into a drone of rolling horror, you hear the soft speech again.

 _“My knight?”_ she calls. You crawl over to the door and peek out. The globs are back, slithering down the hallway as they wrap around a slight, white-haired spirit. _“I retrieved one of your companions.”_

The cloud opens slightly, and you see the limp, flickering body of Nightlight. Gasping, you open the door wide enough for her to deposit him onto the floor of the room. Katherine inhales sharply and shoves you out of the way. She drags his head into her lap and brushes his hair away from his face, crooning softly in an odd language that makes the hairs on your neck stand up. It’s not scaring you, per se, it’s just that the language itself is so foreign—so alien, even—that it hits your ears in an unsettling way. If Katherine ever offers to teach it to you, you might give it a pass for awhile. You turn to Selene.

“Thanks. Did you happen to see Jack or Tooth out there?”

She rises to the ceiling and swirls in a circle for a moment. Then she reaches one end down to your face and says, _“I glimpsed another sprite, I think. Blue, instead of bright white. He led a winged person and a group of soldiers from rubble pile to rubble pile on the other side of the estate. I lost sight of them once I collected this one.”_

You sigh, and Katherine looks at you, a curious look on her face. “They’re alive,” you say to her. “Jack and Tooth and… I think a few of your Raconturks are with them.”

She closes her eyes, sniffing in relief. A few tears escape down her cheeks. “Good,” she finally whispers. “They’ll be able to get those two down to the deep archives. We can regroup there and teleport to the Pole or Warren or somewhere safer than here.”

She gently lays Nightlight down on the ground. His closed eyes twitch and his face screws up with tension for a moment before it relaxes into unconsciousness again. From everything you gather about this Guardian, he’s one of the oldest and strongest, possibly even more powerful than Sandy when all is said and done. You won’t be surprised if he’s awake again by the time you get wherever you’re going.

Katherine slips over to the door in the wall. She leans wide to avoid coming into contact with Selene, watching the swirling globs with a skeptical look. But she tears her gaze away long enough to mutter the spell necessary to make the door retract. And then she kneels at the center of the room, tracing a few more shapes and chanting a few more words until there’s a thump and a creak and a scrape as the hexagonal room you’re in inches its way downward into the bowels of Ganderly.


	96. Act of Attrition

An eternal instant later, there’s a gasp and then Kozmotis and the rabbit are spit out of the transport. He has only a moment to realize they’re suspended a mile above the ground, overlooking some sort of canyon before the snaking ditch grows bigger and bigger. There’s a hiss near his ear as the rabbit realizes the same thing.

Kozmotis twirls in the air, searching, until he sees a series of jutting rocks also threatening to meet them in the worst way. He yanks his arm back, calling upon the strings, and tosses them. Most of them wrap around the nearest thin, towering rock, and he starts retracting them in closer. There’s still too much momentum. The rock gets closer and closer at an ever more alarming rate.

“Do something quick!” the rabbit yells in his ear.

He’s so tempted to jolt the damn Guardian off his back and be done with it, and only the threat of indefinite imprisonment is enough to quell that fleeting rage.

_Why must I be better than that, now…_

He grinds his teeth and draws his other arm back, tossing another wave of threads to a different rock spire and pulling. The strings grow taut, too taut with not enough slack, and his arms scream as the tension grows. They bounce in the middle of the outstretched ropes for a moment, several of the threads snapping from too much tension and pain as Kozmotis’ shoulders threaten to yank from their sockets. Unfortunately, the rabbit squirms as he clings on, and the bouncing doesn’t stop.

“Settle down!” Kozmotis finally yells.

“We’re a full five hundred feet above the ground and neither of us fly! Don’t you dare tell me to settle down!”

“We’ll be on the ground faster if you don’t!”

A few more strings break away and dissipate, jolting them another foot or two. Finally the idiot notices their precarious situation. His claws dig in deeper, puncturing the skin and scraping a bit as he scrambles to find a solid perch.

“Hurry up and get us outta here!”

“I’m trying!”

Kozmotis can’t handle too much more of this stretching. His shoulders, his muscles—all of them burning and probably tearing the longer he hangs there, nevermind the ringing in his ears from the beating the rabbit gave him beforehand. He can’t think properly like this.

The rabbit flicks his head and says. “Let go of one these sides and swing us to one of the rocks.”

Gladly. Kozmotis releases the ones around his dominant hand, and they immediately start swinging in a leftward arc. A boomerang comes up in his peripheral vision as they approach the cliff face. Right before he’s about to scream about being so single-minded, the rabbit shoves ahead of him and lunges it into the rock. They bounce back, grunting, and the weapon remains lodged in a crevice. The rabbit brings out his other as they swing in again.

Kozmotis deliberately leans away this time, letting his passenger dig into another crevice near the first. This time, Kozmotis bounces away alone, much lighter. With equilibrium restored, he managed to plant his feet against the rock wall and summon a few new threads to wrap around his waist and a few other handholds. The rabbit digs his own paws into a few holds, and the two of them sit there panting.

“So, where is she?” The rabbit leans back a bit and looks around. Kozmotis does the same, though he’s sure of the true answer. But neither her true form nor the shadowy specter image she took up months ago is anywhere in sight. He closes his eyes and swears he can hear the faint rumble of thunder moving away.

“Not here,” he finally answers. “I think she figured out we were trying to find her. The connection broke and that’s what forced us out.”

“You’re tellin’ me she doesn’t want to be found that badly?” He shakes his head. “I knew this was a mistake…”

“I don’t exactly have the strongest bond to her, now do I?” Kozmotis reignites the thread to Seraphina, gesturing to its thinness and pale glow. Barely a second after, it starts to fizzle. He’s too exhausted to fight to keep it up, so it snaps again. “I can probably try again after some rest.”

“We ain’t got time for rest!”

“Agreed, but we don’t exactly have a direction, either! Do you even know where we are?!”

The rabbit glares at him, not breaking eye contact as he thumps his foot against the wall. A hole opens up, and a stone egg peeks out. He puts one hand on it and says, “Hey, where are we?” A blissfully quiet moment passes. “Palca Canyon in South America.”

“That doesn’t help us,” Kozmotis grumbles. “She could be anywhere by now.”

The rabbit turns back to the egg. “Any weird weather nearby?”

It ducks back in the hole. While it’s gone, Kozmotis starts examining the best way to get down. His arms are too sore to climb up, and the ground isn’t too far away. He indicates that he’s going, finally landing on the stable dirt after a gentle twenty minute descent. Not long after, the rabbit bounds down to join him, summoning the egg back from a new tunnel.

“Series of sudden and odd rainstorms ‘bout fifty miles north of here, and movin’ fast.”

Kozmotis rolls his eyes. “You have a whole meteorology team down there?”

“Gotta know what I’m gonna be up against when I set eggs out.” He pats the egg and sends it on its way. Then, he brings bit of his green magic up and rubs his shoulder with it. “She’s still on the continent, at least.”

“That is reassuring.”

They stand a good ten feet from each other, swaying where they rest. Kozmotis cranes his neck as much as he can to look up the cliffs and try to imagine the easiest and fastest way to catch up to her. No doubt his daughter will try to lose them as fast as possible. He tries to bring up the connection yet again, but it sputters out before it can truly form. He bends over, placing his hands on his knees and taking deep breaths to try and stabilize himself. Trying to force the magic at this point will probably just knock him out as cold as her trail becomes by the second. His slump deepens, and he finds himself laying on the ground looking up at the clear sky.

He blinks, jolting up a little too fast and earning himself a bout of dizziness. He points. “We need to find our way out of this canyon.”

The rabbit scoffs and huffs. Then he emits a soft, “Ah, yeah. Manny.”

He bounds away, leaping over Kozmotis as he passes. He flinches, and just after, feels the rabbit’s foot connect lightly with his shoulder. As it does, softness overcomes him, as does the fresh scent of healthy plants. He opens his eyes just as a scattering of green ovals and blotches fades into the air like confetti.

The rabbit is just at the base of the steep wall, a dissipating trail of green light betraying the arcing leaps he took to get there. Kozmotis peels himself off the ground, and as he dusts himself off, he pauses. He rotates his shoulders in small circles, and then in more deliberate ones. There’s still a deep ache in his limbs, but it’s far more tolerable. He could even…

Silver blooms at his fingertips, more waiting to be set loose just below the surface of his fresh consciousness.

“Boogeyman!”

Kozmotis jogs over to where the rabbit taps his foot impatiently. As he approaches, the rabbit holds a finger up.

“I’m gonna get us to the top of this thing real quick,” he growls. “Don’t follow any other tunnels except the ones I use. I don’t care if you get lost, but I’d rather you didn’t in my home.”

Without further warning, he opens a hole beneath them both, and Kozmotis tumbles down.

*************

The chamber finally chugs to a halt. Katherine opens another door, checks to make sure the way is clear, and then ushers everyone through into a dimly lit space. At first, there’s nothing to see. Lifting the lens, you can barely separate the different tiles from each other in this darkness. You regret your hasty decision with that eye as soon as Katherine calls out a word and bright orbs of light _fwoosh_ into being.

“Agck!”

As you put the lens back and blink a few times, a larger hexagonal room than the one you were just in comes into view. Twenty-foot ceilings covered in orbs of light. A hundred foot long walls, fitted floor to ceiling with long shelves, save for two of the faces of the hexagon. Those are simply flat walls, or at least, one is, and the one behind you mirrors that once Katherine closes the door to the elevator she’d made.

Katherine crosses the chamber passing through more shelves laid out in a pseudo-labyrinthine pattern. Judging from their spacing, they must look more like concentric shapes if viewed from above, the center of which contains only a tidy table and scroll continuously rolling from right to left hovering above it.

“Don’t touch that, please,” Katherine says, not looking back. You pretend you aren’t a foot away from poking it and jam your hands into your pockets, giving a little twirl.

The shelves pulse with a magic reminiscent of what you’re seen of the mythosphere. The aurora-like shades move along thin lines that hook in and out of different, glowing boxes. You lean in to one. You’d just assumed these were bookcases because, well, _library,_ but the shelves aren’t hollow, nor are the boxes book-shaped. Not to mention they’re cut into sections about three feet wide. Quickly glancing over to Kathrine, you reach out and place a hand on the nearest one. Ripples flow out from where your hand makes contact, and as you run your fingers over it, it feels like the surface of thick water.

“Weird…” you say, moving to touch one of the myriad of tube-like lights connecting each layer. Like a switchboard, or… You snap your fingers, loud enough in the otherwise silent room to make Katherine jump and turn as you say, “This is a server room.”

“This is one of many rooms of my archives,” she replies. “This is where the mythosphere cycles between the storytellers and the stories.”

“And you have a mobile version of it?”

“I suppose?” She pauses and summons the mythosphere you’ve seen before, an arcing aurora just able to surround her person. Then it snaps away and she shrugs, waving for you to follow.

You let Kailash move ahead of you. Nightlight’s faint glow shines from her saddle, and as you watch it pulse, your stomach starts to eat at itself even more. He hadn’t woken up by the time you touched down, and neither Katherine nor the presence of Selene knows why. The glow is a promising sign, though. At least, that’s the phrase you’ve been saying to one another.

Katherine traces out another door on the opposite wall. This one doesn’t lead to another small chamber, but an almost identical room as the large one you exit. The table at the center, however, contains a different glowing scroll on it. You rush over to Katherine’s side as she touches the scroll, pausing its forward motion, and swipes backwards. A series paragraphs in a dense language flips past for awhile. Finally, Katherine stops the motion and touches some of the script. It rises up, unfolding like complicated origami until the entire estate forms in a hovering, rotating picture with a few areas pulsing light.

“Here’s us.” She points to a vague location deep within the core of the tree. You squint, and the pulse resolves a little more into a specific spot of magic. Then she walks around the form until she finds another spot, a look of relief crossing her face. “This is where the others must have entered.”

“So we just have to meet up with them right? Then we can get out of here together.”

“Right.” She glances around, lingering on her goose and Nightlight. “Let’s go.”

With a flick of her fingers, the shelves— _Story servers?_ —rotate around the room, including the ones on the walls, until a different wall is clear. She traces a door onto it, and then leads the party through several more. Each time, she has the large hexagonal rooms rearrange themselves. But even if you could remember how many rights and lefts and catty-corners you’ve taken, you’re not sure you could navigate back to the room you began in. Especially since they’re all functionally identical.

After about twenty minutes, you hear a soft groan from the saddle. You hoist yourself up into it and watch as Nightlight trembles, then flips over. He shakes his head.

“Katherine!” you call, reaching for a plant mixture you made. She bolts into the saddle just as you press the pellet to his back, covering it with your palm. There’s a small _fmph_ and a green smoky discharge, and then he opens his eyes all the way. He sits up, rubbing his forehead.

“Nightlight!” Katherine bowls him over onto his back again. She just as quickly lifts herself off him and sits on her knees, whispering, “Sorry!”

To his credit, Nightlight doesn’t complain or utter a single word. He just smiles at her and welcomes another, gentler hug. That is, until Selene snakes around your shoulders again, humming as she watches on. He glances at you and in an instant has two daggers out and ready. He shoves his way in front of Katherine.

“Woah, woah!” you cry, scooting back as far as you can in the saddle. Once again, you try to grab at Selene, but your fingers slip right through her. “Relax!”

“Shadow,” Nightlight says. You think this might be the first time you’ve heard him speak English, actually. And the word is marred by the same, odd reverb that his speech has in his native language. Regardless of how uncomfortable it makes you, you hold your arms out in front of Selene.

“Selene is our ally,” you say, looking down at him. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

At that, he looks back to Katherine and says something to her. She rolls her eyes and nods.

“Yes, just like Kozmotis,” she replies to him.

Nightlight lets out a sigh and settles down into the saddle again, flopping onto his back. His daggers disappear and he just splays out until he once again rubs his head. Katherine takes one of his hands in hers and lays a kiss to his knuckles.

Before anyone tries to speak to fill the silence again, the opposite wall slides open, and you hear Jack cry, “Guys! Holy crap, am I glad to see you!”

He flies over to the saddle, Toothiana and a few fairies in tow. There’s a moment of everyone exchanging hugs and sighs of relief, and a few more where Katherine runs over to take stock of the Raconturks. About ten file in behind Jack and Tooth, a few of them limping or favoring their arms or sides and leaning on the others. They speak with Katherine in a shared language, and she goes to each and every one.

“Hey, uh…” Jack points behind you. A bit of Selene peeks into your vision. “No one’s freaking out about it, so I guess I won’t, but it’s a little freaky?”

You introduce him and Tooth to Selene, at least the small part of her that made it. Tooth reaches out and runs a finger over a bit of Selene. She cocks her head and her feathers ruffle.

“I guess she’s all right. Can she get us all out of here, you think? Given that the teleport globes are malfunctioning?”

“What?” You seize up, hoping you did not just hear what you—

“You didn’t try to use it?” Tooth blinks. “Jack and I figured you’d retreat as soon as possible.”

“We weren’t about to leave y’all here!”

She laughs at that. Jack takes over. “Me and Tooth figured we could hole up somewhere or start trying to clear out the shadows while you grabbed North and the others. But after awhile, we realized there was too much noise and activity to try and fight them off that way. We’d gathered a few Raconturks on our dash out, so at the very least we figured we’d try and get them to safety.

“But after we tried to set it for the Pole, we were redirected out of the warp by a bunch of violet light and shadows. Luckily, our whole group got spat out in the same place.”

Nightlight hovers nearby, makes an affirmative noise, and speaks. Katherine covers her mouth with a hand. After she recovers, she says, “He says they tried to teleport directly into the library once North told them of the breach. However, they were redirected as well.”

“Do we have any way off this island?” Your voice cracks. Katherine shakes her head.

“If we can’t teleport—and we probably won’t have much more luck flying—then the only other way is a boat across the water.” She pales as Nightlight says something else. “And that is also right out.”

“So this is a siege,” you say. “They’re gonna try and wear us down before hunting us down.”


	97. Life-Changing Field Trips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for 160 kudos! <3
> 
> also, no update Wednesday 2/3. next update Friday 2/5

In an effort to ignore the tense waiting, you all gather around the tiny table and try to make a plan.

“We have to knock the spire out. That will at least stun them and break their power,” Tooth says immediately. You choke on your own spit as you sputter at the nonsense.

“Do you realize how big that thing is? We can’t take it down by ourselves!”

“As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize.” Her dry tone makes you want to curl up and die. “It can’t be that much bigger than the others. The Uluru spire was maybe ten stories.”

“This one is tall enough to rip its way through the ten story wall of the library,” Katherine replies. Tooth nods, smiling. “I mean the wall of the library _plus_ the five stories down to the ground.”

“Oh… Oh no.” She touches her fingertips to her temples and stares down. “So we have to find something strong enough to take it out. Although…” She turns her head a bit your direction. “There’s always—”

“No,” you say. You take out a few spire shards and toss them onto the table. “You have these. And those are already bad enough.”

Tooth sighs and reaches out for them. She cringes as she gathers them up and tucks them into her belt. “Fine. Guess this’ll drag out even more.”

“We’re getting nowhere.” Jack says, tapping his glowing staff between you two. Frost ferns bloom out and spit a bit of ice into your faces. “For real, what’s gonna be the plan?”

“I want to round up as many Raconturks as we can find,” Katherine says. “Their safety is high priority. They can take care of themselves, but all of us are overwhelmed here, and I shudder to think of how many… how many we may not find after…”

“I’ll go find them.” Tooth turns her head, listening. “I’ll bring back as many as I can. If you get enough here, you all should be able to shout through a good chunk of the shadows, right?”

“Tooth,” you say.

She starts walking. The fairies skitter after her and nudge her away from brushing the shelves. When she reaches the other end of the walkway, she holds a hand out. Finding another shelf, she holds her hand against the wall and walks another direction.

“Tooth!” You run over to her, grabbing at her wrist. She pulls out of your hold and easily flips it until your arm twists in a painful position. After a squeak of pain, she drops you. “Tooth you can’t go out there by yourself.”

She gestures to the fairies around her. They chirp nervously, but close ranks around her.

 _“Perhaps we should accompany this one.”_ Selene slithers over, getting a little too close to one of the mini-fairies. They poke at the globules with their sharp nose. It goes right through Selene, but she hums nonetheless. _“These ones,”_ she corrects.

“I mean, I can go, too. I guess,” you reply. “If you come along, you can help scout. Kidra could carry you, Tooth.”

“Sounds good. Though I do wonder, Selene.” Tooth reaches out to her. “Is there any other way you can help us?”

 _“I can hear the shadows somewhat,”_ she replies. _“I cannot make too much sense of the small ones. I can comprehend slightly more of the large ones. The beast over the Earth is the most clear. However, I cannot fight my way to the moon through their cover. This was supposed to be a temporary form. It will not withstand much.”_

Tooth’s crest flickers. Feathers all over her body ruffle and her fairies chirp nervously. “What did she say?”

“You can’t…?” She shakes her head, as does Katherine. “Oh…” You relay her message.

“I’ll take a distraction or scout if you can handle it,” Tooth replies.

She lets the commands drop from her voice easily. You’ve seen it more and more lately, but it’s uncanny how she can flip from the giggly persona you met her with to, essentially, a soldier. She calls your name, sharpness honed with giddiness.

“Bring your mixtures. We’ll need them.”

“Before you go…” Katherine has been dashing between triage and messing with the story servers. A bunch of the more well-off Raconturks help her, calling different words out and darting between different rooms as they drag some of the magic with them.

Katherine nearly stumbles over a few who are sleeping off their recent experiences. You worry for them, but on the one hand, humans _need_ sleep, so a barrage of dropped Raconturks is inevitable at some point. On the other hand, there’s a world of nightmares just outside probably waiting to feast on a bunch of exhausted people. No one else looks worried, however, so you just pin that up in the back of your mind to maybe remember later. Katherine and Nightlight draw up next to you all.

I need someone to retrieve the books from my personal office.” She looks at you. “You’ve seen it before. I just need all of those books safe down here.”

“No problem,” Tooth says.

“And you,” Katherine turns to Jack. “You and I need to see if we can’t harness the Internet for a little extra boost.”

“Sick,” he replies, dragging out his phone. “I’ve set up a few accounts in some places. Some followers, but if we try a bit, maybe we can figure out how to turn that into belief.”

You break from there. The next hour or so has you huddling next to Toothiana on Kidra’s back, creeping through the theoretically infinite corridors and reading rooms of Ganderly. Selene scouts ahead and reports back every so often, letting you mark all the dangerous and safe(r) areas on your impromptu map. Every so often, you come across a pack of hiding Raconturks, some of whom try to flatten you if they don’t get a good look at you first.

“Sor—” a particularly burly one says, one who nearly took your head off with a well-placed clothesline rush. You all rush to hiss at them to be quiet.

“Meet with Katherine in Archive Fables-Cross-Mystery,” you scribble out. They rip the page from your notebook and nod a thank you, disappearing into a doorway through the wall.

So it goes, until the only places you haven’t combed through are the grounds and a few of the open-air courtyards. Before hitting those up, however, you make your way to the core of the estate.

The atmosphere is heavier here. It reminds you of Thera, when the spire was active the night of the equinox. You run your tongue over the inside of your mouth, trying to chase away the ashy cottonmouth.

“We close?” Tooth whispers. “This area feels dangerous.”

“It is, but this is where Katherine said to go.”

Kidra pauses as Selene creeps back around the corner, their ears going back. The oily cloud sidles up to your shoulders and whispers into your ear.

_“I believe your goose friend’s office is just ahead. However, there is a thick barrier. There are a lot of angry shadows trying to get in.”_

“Then let’s hurry.”

Tooth drags out one of her swords and takes a tight hold of Kidra’s mane. You slip off and sneak ahead. Just as Selene said, a flickering wall of shadows blocks your path. You try to go around the other way, but another blocks that one, surrounding the door to the office. It’ll be a fight, then. You drag out a few shards and arrows.

“Make us all proud,” Tooth drawls from where she sits. You glare back, knowing she can’t see you, but the fairies’ desperate looks are enough of an answer. You clench the shard until it glows, and step out into the hallway.

 _Time to be the demon,_ you say to yourself. You snort, letting your heart lighten as you slip into the zone. _Arguably more metal than a scorpion._

As you draw back on the first arrow, the shard cracks and splinters in your hand. The gross feeling is too reminiscent of the itch on your neck to ignore, but you get a hold of yourself fast enough that you can cover the arrow in a bit of the excess magic curling out of your hand. At the last second, you shift and nudge the lens up, just a bit. The thick wall is still there, but you can make out the least bit of give in one spot.

You take a deep breath, aim, and release.

*************

Kozmotis drags himself out of the hole at the top of the cliff. Not a few yards away, the rabbit lifts himself as high as he can go on his feet, twitching nose up to the mostly clear, starry sky. In the middle is the moon, barely a waxing crescent, though a lunar halo surrounds it.

“Manny!” the rabbit calls. He leaps back and forth over the ridge. “Moonbeams! We’re down here!”

There’s a flicker so slight, Kozmotis swears it was just a trick of the light, but a single, thin moonbeam reaches down. It touches down a ways away, miles from their current location. He and the rabbit take a moment to look at each other before they take off across the ridge.

The rabbit easily gets ahead of him, dropping to all fours for more speed. If Kozmotis didn’t have decent night vision, he’d be stumbling all over the dips and crevices and loose rocks the rabbit bounds over. _Or creates himself,_ he thinks as the rabbit hesitates ahead of him for only one second to give an extra kick to a patch of stones. Kozmotis whips away the attempted shrapnel with a few threads.

Eventually, they reach another ledge overlooking the canyon. Kozmotis wheezes as he comes up alongside the rabbit, who’s barely increased his own panting. He points across the way.

“Looks like a small cave over there,” he says.

He thumps his foot. A hole opens, then fills back in. He lets out a most cathartic indignant grunt and tries again. For single instant across the canyon, a mirroring hole opens just inside the cave. Just as quickly, a harsh wind blows in, eroding the edges of the hole until it gives up and collapses. The moonbeam manages to fight against the gale and floats like a directionless balloon as soon as it subsides. The rabbit growls.

“Swing us over,” he orders. He reaches for his shoulder and Kozmotis steps back.

“Give me a moment!”

He closes his eyes and steadies his breathing. Much as he wants to demand the rabbit use his manners, they’re already testing each other’s patience. As well as the lenience of the shadows at Ganderly versus the tenacity of his partner and the Guardians.

There’s a faint touch at his shoulder. Kozmotis flinches away only for him to grab onto his robes and hold him in place. The rabbit slaps his paw down, letting green magic seep from his fingers through Kozmotis’ skin. The soft sensation comes over him again. His heart rate evens out; the soreness in his legs disappears; a reservoir of energy fills up, and he knows he’ll be able to get them both across. Kozmotis looks at the rabbit.

“I’m getting mixed messages here,” he whispers.

“I’m havin’ a mixed crisis.” The rabbit releases him. “Look, I’m gonna hold you to your word, and if that means keepin’ you alive to make you pay up, then so be it.”

An odd, lukewarm feeling spreads out in Kozmotis’ core. It’s neither dread nor awe, neither is it grief nor graciousness. He cannot put a name to it, but he internalizes the sentiment all the same. If this is an olive branch, it is one specially cultivated to resemble the Sword of Damocles, and that knowledge is perversely comforting.

“I understand.”

He summons his magic, tossing a handful out to the other side. They barely wrap around the jutting rock before said rock face bursts outward into a serrated spike. It tears through half the threads before receding, and that barely disappears before another shoots up from the other side, snapping even more.

Kozmotis retracts the threads and looks around. Then he nods to the rabbit, saying, “Let’s go.” He wraps a few threads around him before the rabbit can blink, and then he swings them to an outcrop closer to their side. A stream of anger and reluctant acceptance runs up the tethers connecting him and the rabbit. He’d expected nothing less.

He swings them over to another rock face, and the area around it wakes up. More serrated spikes of earth burst out of the cliffs, and he has to keep moving or risk falling as the threads snap bit by bit.

They’re about halfway across the canyon when a strong wind kicks up, throwing dirt in his face. He closes his eyes against the grains and sputters out, “I can’t see!”

“Cliff at two o’clock!”

Kozmotis throws out another mass of strings that direction, grateful when most of them connect. He reels them in. Suddenly, the rabbit yanks his head to the side, and his foot slips, making them fall a few feet before he manages another grip.

“Are you daft?!” he yells. There’s a crashing sound directly above them. Rubble connects with his head.

“No,” is the answer to his scream. Then, “The spike is still out directly above you. Grab onto it!”

Kozmotis reaches upwards, looping the tethers around the slowly retreating stone. He starts pulling them up to it, when the rabbit shoves his head to the side again. He follows the movement and ducks, and the next thing he hears is a crunching of stone and the soft _fwp_ of boomerangs returning to their wielder.

“Keep takin’ us up!”

He obliges, and crawls up onto the spike once he reaches it. Finally, he can brush the dirt from his eyes, and as he blinks, he sees that a cyclone of wind and dirt has surrounded the area. Lightning flashes within the walls, and the faint spray of rain hits him sideways. The cavern opening is only one or two jumps away. Maybe three, if the newly moving pieces of earth have anything to say about it. He summons more tethers.

“Here.” The rabbit motions toward his weapon. “I can make the throw.”

“You’d better,” Kozmotis mumbles. But he ties a cord around the boomerang and tosses out as much slack as he hopes he needs.

The rabbit twists back, and with a loud yell throws his weapon out. It whips between the converging spikes and digs in to the far rock face with a muffled _thunk._ He settles back around Kozmotis’ shoulders and screams for him to move, as if either of them need prompting at this point. Kozmotis gets a slight running start. There’s not much room on this thin spike, either to back up or to gain momentum.

First foot down. The rabbit had better have good risk-reward analysis.

Second foot. There are so many spikes, all converging into the exact path the tethers will take them.

His toes at the edge. He starts reeling in the slack.

The wind-up and the jump. The rabbit swears next to his ear, simultaneously petitioning the Man in the Moon for help and cursing his obtuse communication.

They pull through the air, now at the mercy of the earth around them. The wind threatening to knock them off-course. The rain daring them to grab onto the sheer surfaces around them. The apathetic rocks closing in, spikes like waiting teeth. Despite himself, Kozmotis closes his eyes as they near the thin pass.

“Hya!”

The rabbit gives a small shout and moves so roughly, he’s afraid they’re being knocked off course. But the scraping stone pauses, a terrible squealing just above him. It’s barely a second, but it’s enough to let them pass through with only a few scrapes from the needle points of stone.

Once they clear the crushing walls, Kozmotis opens his eyes. Elation. Relief. Bewilderment at that working. He blinks, hysterical laughter bubbling up as the rabbit’s emotions zing through the connection. In another blink, he finally pulls them up the tethers and tips the both of them over the lip of the cave. They tumble a few yards, and the rest of the tethers collapse, disconnecting him and the rabbit.

The both of them lay there, panting, Kozmotis still laughing from the adrenaline. But eventually, they slow. They settle.

The rabbit is the first to stand, grabbing onto a wall to steady himself. He hobbles over to the lip of the cave, looks out and sighs. Kozmotis drags himself up to sitting, panting and trying to wet his mouth again. For his efforts, he spits out globs of mud. The rabbit returns and leans against the wall, twirling his weapon in his hand.

“Rest in peace,” he mutters.

“What happened?”

“Stuck my other weapon between the rocks. Didn’t know if it’d work, but I guess it bought us an extra half second.” He holds his arms out. “And we’re alive and unharmed.”

“Oh, you can make another one, can’t you?”

He’s silent for a moment. “Yeah. But I use a specific wood for my good ones. It’ll take a few years.”

No words pass between them for a bit. Kozmotis stands and stretches himself out. The rabbit keeps fiddling with his remaining weapon, and that’s when Kozmotis finally takes enough time to look at it.

Yggsbark. Oh, it’s been some time and recovered memories since he’s seen any, but he recognizes that rare, powerful wood. An odd inconsistency of the Pookas’ manufacturing, perhaps the one piece of natural life they hadn’t managed to replace with mechanical wonders. The rabbit must have gone through great pains to grow it on this planet, so far from its native sources. He sighs and finally sheathes it.

Kozmotis holds out a hand to him. The rabbit raises a brow, half a sneer curling on his muzzle.

“I’m sorry, Bunnymund,” he says. "I realize how heavy that sacrifice was to you."

Rapid blinking, nose twitching, ears focusing. He offers the hand again, and after a moment’s hesitation, a paw grasps it. The paw glows with green magic, seeping up his arm and closing the superficial scratches on his skin. In return, a faint thread of silver strings curls around the paw, mingling each other's hesitancy together.

“Thank you for your concern, Kozmotis.” He glares at him.

A glow passes over them. The moonbeam. It lets out a garble of noise and rises back out of the cave, returning to the moon. No other clues to set them on a direct path. They start pattering down the cavern.

“Let’s go, Boogeyman.”

“Of course, rabbit.”


	98. Child and Change

The cavern soon opens up into a grand, yet humble space. The rabbit whistles appreciatively as he looks around.

“Not bad,” he says. He leaps over to a carved shelf, haphazardly filled with trinkets and artifacts that human anthropologists would die to possess. “So this is her base of operations, huh?”

“I can only assume so,” Kozmotis replies. He runs his fingers over a set of deep gashes in the threshold. They match up fairly well to the spikes from before.

Overall, the area is sparse, though the layout looks familiar. Kozmotis walks through it, touching a pile of cushions vaguely shaped into a sofa. Instinctively, he reaches just to his side and grabs a glass off the nearby table without looking. He pauses, looking at his hand. Then he walks straight through to the other end of the open space.

There’s a carved hole in the rock, decorated with various plants and lichens, like curtains. He peers out of it, noticing it’s just at the right angle to view the sky. The stagnant stars of this planet twinkle down, not quite bright enough to drown out the blinking wing lights of a passing plane. It arcs high in the air, the faintest trail diffusing after it. The smoke of Earth’s flying machines cannot hold a candle to the gentle stardust trails that peppered the Golden Age planets in a fine layer of glitter, adding an ethereal effect to an already romantic time. Kozmotis leans to his right and places his hand down, jolting himself as he meets a smooth sideboard. Even more odd is that he half-expected it.

He’s been here before, in this scenario.

Kozmotis backs away from the window for a moment, back behind the entrance. He takes a step forward, crossing the threshold and closes his eyes.

“Koz!” Xiorena’s voice sounds in his head as he opens his eyes. And as that first dream memory recovered months ago swims over him again, he realizes that this cavern—his daughter’s hidden home—is laid out as much like their old villa as she presumably could muster.

“Oh…” He sets the glass down before his shaking hands drop it. “Oh…”

“Hey, you smell that?” The rabbit snorts as Kozmotis jumps. “Maybe not. Come over here.”

The rabbit leads him down a short side tunnel. Suddenly, a dizzying aroma overwhelms him. He peeks into a warm room. A simple piled-stone stove houses a low fire with a steaming pan sitting on top. Kozmotis takes a deep breath. There’s something about the texture of the smell, the combination of acridity and fragrant herbs intermingling that transports him even further back in time to a calmer, wholesome state of being.

“She figured out the trick,” the rabbit says, nodding at the dish. He grabs an old towel and gently takes the lid of the pan off. “It’s not quite the same, but you get a real good substitute for orionacus dishes with some hyssop if you use some walnut charcoal.” He takes a whiff. “Smells like she’s cookin’ over the walnut, too. Don’t blame her; it’s comfortin’.”

“It smells like the Golden Age.”

“The bits around the constellation Orion, at least.”

The rabbit looks around the small kitchen some more, but Kozmotis wanders back to the main room. Another hallway shoots off from it, and he finds another, smaller room there. His memory lurches forth more easily, whether because of his own awareness or with the help of the almost-familiar aroma.

This bedroom, like the entrance, is approximately the same as his memory dream. However, he runs his fingers through the thick layers of dust and grime covering the makeshift bed, which looks like it was created to be forgotten. Something taps against the stone wall. She has her own set of trophies, though they are few. A bit of a solidified star glitters on a small niche, as do some dried, curled, glittery scales that he recognizes from starfish.

But the most prominent object is a worn, ripped block of a light, dense material. There are remnants of paint on it, and as Kozmotis lays his palm across it, the image of his daughter’s face that day she was first gifted her small boat appears in his mind. He checks the material again, and there is a curling design that could be part of the star ship’s decoration from so long ago.

“It seems the years have not yet managed to erase your origins,” he murmurs, lifting it up to see it better.

A sudden gust of wind knocks it from his grip. As it tumbles to the stone floor with a muffled thud, Kozmotis spins around, shielding his eyes as a suffocating gale closes in around him. His ears pop from the pressure. He struggles to draw breath. But he fights to keep his eyes cracked.

Mother Nature looms just beyond the threshold. Her hair whips around in a controlled chaos. Small flashes of lightning arc from her fingertips to the fog at her feet. The walls warp and stretch into more spikes of earth, each of them corkscrewing closer and closer.

“How dare you!” she roars. The cave walls tremble. Just beyond, he hears the rabbit shout something before the weather stifles him as well. “How dare you invade my home!”

Kozmotis reaches out, summoning as many silver tethers as he can manage in the face of this opposition. He steps forward, steadying himself against the wind. She sends the spikes at him, and he barely manages to slip between their points while also weaving threads around them to create a net in case he’s thrown backwards. He takes another step.

“Please!” he yells, hoping she can hear. “Please, we mean you no harm! We only seek your help to resolve—”

“I take no sides in your silly war!” She blasts the wind so hard, a sonic boom goes off in the middle of the hallway. Kozmotis loses nearly all his tethers, but he keeps hold of enough to drag himself forward one more step.

“Then let me make amends.”

“That is impossible. I have been scorned too long and thrown away too many times!”

“Please—” Kozmotis digs his hands into the wall. She looms larger, blotting herself out into gray darkness from the low thunderheads she summons. Electricity builds in the area, and static charges jump from cloud to cloud. “Seraphina, please!”

Everything but the howling wind surrounding them dies. The clouds disperse, rocketing the small static charges down the hallway.

There she stands: shoulders back, staring him down, jaw set. Eyes glistening and wavering as she whispers, “What did you say?”

*************

The arrow hits deep into the shadows. It bursts out into a display of blue ropes, a mix of Koz and Jack’s powers. These, however, run through the barrier like veins, and thanks to the extra _oomph_ from the shard, they spread fast and deep.

That doesn’t stop the fearlings from screaming, though.

A wave descends upon you. You trip over yourself as you hurry to back up and gain a bit more range as you drag a few more arrows out. Kidra leaps over you, their bellowing mixing with Tooth’s fervent shouting. As they pass over and enter the fray, you glimpse Tooth’s hand glowing as she takes one of her own shards out.

A few fairies chirp nearby. They pull at your shirt sleeves until you get up again and back up to where you’re more comfortable. They nod and land on your shoulders as you aim another arrow. This one cuts most of the scream short as the enhanced gold cuts right through them.

“Do your fairies see the door?” you scream.

Tooth doesn’t answer right away. She’s too busy laughing as she follows the motions of Kidra and the small taps her fairies give her to let her know what’s incoming. One look at her face lets you know she’s in ecstasy.

“Tooth!” You try again. One of the fairies at your side taps your cheek and drags at your hair, forcing you to the side just as a tendril of darkness slams down where you once were. Tooth’s still slicing away.

You look around one last time and dash forward. The shadows roar at your presence, and Kidra immediately shifts to cover you. You let loose a few more arrows, and when the area gets too narrow, you switch to the pellets.

But there it is: the door to the office.

One more dreamsand pellet explodes behind you, and you’re there at the doorknob, frantically twisting it back and forth. It gives, but the door won’t swing.

_“I shall determine the problem.”_ Selene zips around you and slides into a crack under the door.

A muffled shout of surprise kicks up, then another and one more besides that. You lean in close. Those voices… you can’t understand what they’re saying, but you recognize the language as the native Raconturk’s.

“Hey!” you scream, banging on the door. “Open up! It’s me and Toothiana! Katherine sent us to help!” Pressing your ear to the door again, all you hear is the same distressed noises. “Selene! I don’t think it’s working! Come back out—”

A blast knocks the door off its hinges. It sails across the hallway, crashing into the opposite wall, you sandwiched between. It falls to the floor, conking some shadows on its way. You just lean there, stunned, until Kidra once again backs towards you and grabs your wrist in their mouth.

“Are you all right?” Tooth asks. At a chirp from her fairies, she stabs out at an incoming shadow. It retreats back into the fold.

“Yeah, for now,” you reply. You shake yourself loose and blast a new path over to the doorway.

A bunch of furniture is toppled through. The Raconturks inside had apparently made a barrier, and all it took was a mistimed shout for them to break it. Glancing inside, you see them trying to surround something.

_“I believe they are all right,”_ Selene calls as she hovers above them. She loops a few times before making her way to you. You just shake your head and wave to the Raconturks.

“We’re here to help, and so is this thing!” You point at Selene. They look you up and down, watching for deception, but the one in charge eventually seems to think you’re on the level. She orders something in their language, and a few hustle out to the hallway.

They take in deep breaths, and you almost don’t cover your ears in time as the force of their power words ricochet from wall to wall, driving the shadows back just a bit. You nock an arrow, holding another at the ready. The fearlings around you are still dense, but they’re starting to scramble as their ranks clear. Tooth yanks back on Kidra more than you wish she would, making them rear, and then she leans over them with her sword outstretched to catch a few more on the blade.

_“Allow me to help.”_

Selene settles over your arms as you draw the bow. She hasn’t made much physical contact with you since she got here, but as soon as she mingles with the extra magic at your fingers, a familiar sensation comes over you, a familiar burn. The iridescence of your power concentrates until it look like nothing more than a hard, black marble surface. You inhale. A burning you haven’t felt in weeks—and a power you haven’t tried out in just as long—starts to spread over your body.

The arrow releases. As it flies through the air, the extra dense iridescence closes in even further, morphing the arrow itself until it splits and becomes a barrage of smaller darts. Each of them fall upon a portion of the shadows, exploding into bright arrays of gold, blue, green, and silver. The shadows it hits scream even louder, and they retreat. On the other side of the hallway, the untouched shadows freeze, jerking in glitch-like formation for a moment until they, too, retreat.

The silence of the corridor is disturbing and all too loud for you personally. Even with the shadows gone, there’s a weird whispering or churning pounding through your head, and you can already feel the exhaustion creeping back in. Closing your eyes, you try to will it away, but a hand around your upper arm snaps you out of that notion.

Tooth holds you carefully, listening to her fairies chirp rapidly. She tugs you toward the door.

“Inside. Quick.” You let her drag and toss you inside. The Raconturks help you sit, and a few others run and drag the door back to the entrance. This feeling, though… You haven’t felt like this since… since…

Since you rid yourself of the mark in the shadow’s realm.

“You have no idea how happy we are to see you,” one of the Raconturks says. She checks you over for injuries, an increasingly worrying frown on her face. “Ms. Katherine set it up that no one can teleport in or out of this room. Fortified it with all sorts of enchantments to prevent this very thing. Ironically, the same thing that kept us safe all this time also kept us trapped.” She pats your arm and nods. “Thank you for getting through to us.”

“No prob,” you reply, sitting up. Selene settles over you again. The Raconturk leans away, frown deepening.

“In the meantime,” she continues, “we have been conducting more research into the Sources. And we…” She motions over to one of the others. He dashes to a bookshelf and grabs something. “We think we may have stumbled upon something… odd.”

“Can it wait until we’re back in the Archives?” Tooth asks.

The Raconturk eyes Selene. “For the majority of it, yes, but I do believe you need to hear some of it now.” You wave at them to continue. The Raconturk flips open to a page and traces her finger down until she hits a certain line. Then, she looks up at the blot of Selene, who you suddenly notice is slightly smaller than she was ten minutes ago. The Raconturk says, “What exactly are you, Selene?”

_“I am the moon,”_ she replies. You translate.

“That’s it?”

“Is that it, Selene?”

_“My source is on the moon. I have no recollections beyond the moon.”_

Tooth crosses her arms, and the Raconturk gets a distant, yet focused look about her.

Selene drifts across your ear as they take a moment of silent thought and whispers, _“Well… I think I may have other memories. But I am less sure about those.”_

“Go on,” you say. But she says no more, opting instead to wander close to one of the shelves. And at that, you finally snap. “Selene, what the hell do you mean by that?! And I want a real answer this time!”

The globules of iridescence shudder, and the one end looks back to you. You cross your arms and glare at her.

“Now isn’t the time to keep shit from us! We’re in a dire situation here, and if you have any info on how to get us out of it, I want to hear it!”

Selene hovers in the air, silent. The others lean in a bit. Then she slowly settles back over your shoulders. _“I spoke with the eldritch beast. It called me its long-lost sibling. Its changed sibling. Since then, I have received visions. They are strange. They seem like they are from something else’s lifetime._

_“In them I am small. I have no source. I am not the moon, though I am many. It is strange to describe._

_“I am on the moon, but am not the moon. I am there for someone else. I am there with others like me. But they are not like_ me. _I can sense all of their thoughts and impulses as my own. They can sense mine. We are never alone in thought._

_"There is a plan. A good plan, strong plan, wicked plan. The other plans did not work. There was too much light interfering. So, we go to where there is no light. We go to the shadow part of the moon.”_

You’ve been quietly relaying this to the others. Tooth closes in and holds her sword at the ready.

_“I go with scouts to the edge of the darkness. We will watch for signs of resistance. There is eventually resistance, I hear. I think I hear… Something happens after that. I find something.”_ She makes a sound like a gasp. _“I find my source. And then everything changes.”_

“You existed, and then you find your source?” you ask. “What does that even mean?”

_“In the vision, I find my source. In my recollections, I am just the moon. My source is ever-changing. It is why your powers are what they are. Is that not the same conclusion you have drawn about the other sources?”_

The other… The other…? You meet the Raconturk’s eyes, and the both of you make a silent realization. Tooth points her sword, the first to vocalize the revelation, “Shadow.”

“Selene,” you say slowly. “This source of yours… It’s like—”

_“It is like the ones you hold in your quiver, my knight. They are Spring and Summer and Fall and Winter. I am the moon; I am Change.”_


	99. Favor Amidst the Fervor

A fifth source. There’s a fifth source for this planet. Or, at least there is for the moon. Selene trails behind you as you pace in a tight circle, trying to organize all the new questions and concerns babbling up in your mind.

“If the Source is on the moon,” you whisper, “does it even affect the Earth?”

“Well, you exist,” Tooth replies. “Didn’t she just say the reason your powers are what they are is because of that?” Then she blinks. “Wait, if she’s a former shadow from Pitch’s moon assault, how’d she become this?”

_“If the visions are true, then I became once I found my source.”_

“I guess this kind of explains why none of you or Manny ever noticed her. A bit. Maybe.” You shake your head. “Maybe it’s why Koz was the only one who could hear her besides me.”

_“Your shadow man is quite attuned.”_

Tooth clears her throat, and then bangs her fist a few times on the nearest wall. “As intriguing as I find this, we need to get a move on. Get the Raconturks back to the Archives and figure out a way to sabotage the shadows, right?”

You reluctantly nod and suppress every desire to sit down and dig in to this new development. She’s right; study can happen when you’re safe. But one last question, though.

“Selene, what did you do to me back there?”

_“I do not understand the question.”_

“When you said you were gonna help me take care of the shadows. You did something.”

The one end flicks to one side, like she’s cocking her head. _“I was allowing you to use a bit of my raw power. Your magic is Change-based, but it is merely a facet of my Source.”_

“What’d she say?” Tooth is now very close to you. After you translate, she grabs your hand and holds it up. “Are their fingertips glowing?”

A Raconturk leans over and says, “In a sense, I suppose. It’s very faint.”

You wiggle your fingers. A small wave of the oil-slick marbling flares up at the tips, almost making them look like they belong to a rainbow corpse. Your gut clenches. Toothiana smiles.

“Interesting,” she says. She travels up your arm and touches your head. “Any withdrawal pain?”

“Not yet.”

_“There should not be much pain. Only mostly exhaustion. You are made from my Source. I also did not give you more than you can handle. At least, I do not think it was too much. We shall see.”_

“The Source of Change is sentient.” Toothiana’s face lights up. Her wings buzz, and she squeals, tossing her arms up is celebration. “And the withdrawal symptoms are based on which powers are derived from which Source!”

She bursts out laughing and starts flying in giddy circles. Her poor fairies scramble to make sure she doesn’t bump into anything, but she scoops them up in a hug. The Raconturk leans over to you.

“Is she all right?”

“She thinks she’s won an argument,” you growl. As Tooth’s foot passes by, you snatch out and grab her ankle, yanking her back down to the floor. She lands with a cry, and you brush away the fairies as they try to peck your eyes. “Tooth, stop it right now!”

Her foot connects with your jaw, sending you reeling down to the floor yourself. She’s on top of you in an instant, sword out and too close to your ear for comfort.

“What is wrong with you!” she yells. “We finally have information to work with the Sources safely, and you still won’t do it? Do you want to save the planet or not?”

“I don’t want to rely on dangerous forces of nature!”

You clutch her sword wrist and push it off you. She lefts herself up and plunges her knee into your stomach. As you gasp for air, she digs it in further until presses just under your rib cage. She leans down as you struggle for air, desperately trying to keep a little control over her arms.

“What don’t you understand about this?” she hisses. “Why don’t you trust us to let us take advantage of all this? We’re the Guardians. We would never—”

“That’s—” you cough. “What I… told myself… too…”

Not breathing is so uncomfortable. You’re relatively sure it’s not lethal anymore, but it sure the fuck isn’t a state you prefer to be in. But Tooth bears down on you even more.

“These ends justify the means. Even if we didn’t know using closely-aligned Sources reduces withdrawal, it would still be justified!” She flicks her head around the room. “Am I wrong?”

The Raconturks mumble on the sidelines. A bruise starts rising on your stomach, you can feel it under the pinpoint of pressure. It’s been too long since you took a breath, and a mortal panic starts to set in. You thrash, trying to call out, trying to suck fresh air down. Some magic bursts from your fingertips. Some other magic pulls toward it.

“What’re you—?” Tooth’s voice is drowned out by others from your past.

_“Leftists love to envision utopias, but they hate thinking about all the hard decisions.” Your direct supervisor, red in hair and politics. “We make all the sacrifices, they take all the credit, and they blame us for having to decide which means justify their ridiculous ends.”_

_“Yeah, my generation talks in buzzwords and ideals.” You, true neutral and passive. “My profs were the same way. But ideals don’t bring home the bacon.”_

_“I think you could have better tact, but it’s a hard pill to swallow.” A colleague, directly to the supervisor, indirectly to you. “A few less trees or polar bears and some slightly warmer weather is a small price to pay for the survival and progress of our nation.”_

_“Besides, the Cold War taught us that everyone is always trying to build bigger bombs. Just in case.” Your supervisor laughed._

_“‘Just in case’ is a good policy.” You assured yourself of this yet again. “We’re all just waiting on the next kook out there with a god complex to melt down. My money’s on North Korea.”_

_You all laughed and placed your bets. This wasn’t the first conversation of its kind._

Suddenly, air flows back into your lungs. Toothiana yanks her arms out of your grip, and you flip over and crawl away to the other wall. At that point, a wave of exhaustion hits you, as does a minor headache, and you can barely sit yourself upright.

“I’m not like them,” Tooth says. She takes out her other sword and flips them around, then slashes through a few stances. Her fairies squeak and chirp and try to get close to her. “I wouldn’t be so irresponsible with the Sources.” She thrusts, and both the swords stick deep into the wall. She tries to yank them out, but gives up and moves on to pacing. “I’m the Tooth Fairy. Kids rely on me to keep them and their memories safe from fear. You don’t trust me?” A tear breaks loose from the corner of her eye. “Am I really untrustworthy?”

“Oh, Tooth, I trust you. I just don’t trust myself.” You swallow against the lump in your throat. “I just got back on the reality train after three-quarters of a century of denial and justifications. But I barely trust myself when I mess with the Sources for Rina’s cure. Or simple studies. Besides a hard time processing how belief works, that’s probably the number two reason why I suck at magic.”

“Look, your supervisor was a horrible person, but was he wrong about the hard decisions thing?”

“Why is it when people talk about making hard decisions, they always imply that the more immediately destructive route is the correct decision? And that taking a less destructive route is somehow not a difficult choice to make?” You shrug and gesture around. “Take this right now. All of this destruction that, let’s be honest, is kind of my fault. I powered up Pitch’s fearlings a year ago. I kept playing with the Sources and delving into the shadows out of selfish curiosity. And I don’t know if it’s even worth it yet.”

Tooth goes still and silent except her buzzing wings. They flicker a few times before she lifts off a bit. Letting her fairies guide her, she hovers over to you and reaches out a hand. You take it, not the least bit because you’re too exhausted to hold yourself up thanks to the Source in you.

“I admit, I deeply respect your commitment to not using the Sources now,” she says, hauling you up. She grins. “Standing by your values is always important. But…”

Before you realize she’s winding up, her open hand slaps you across your face, making you see stars.

“But I think you’d be a little more productive if you dropped that martyr complex off your shoulders.” She hauls her arm around you to keep you standing until you regain your bearings. “First things first, we have to escort these guys down to the Archives so they can help Katherine. Then, we can ballyhoo back and forth about who has the more deserving angst.”

She loads you onto Kidra before sitting down herself, and then she quickly rallies the Raconturks. In almost no time, they pack up the rest of the books and gather each other up. The nearest wall they can make a doorway on is straight down the hallway, but the rising sound of the next wave of fearlings has you all bugging out of there ASAP.

The party manage to reach halfway down the hall just as the roiling black swirls behind you. It’s all clamoring nonsense from the shadows. Laughter and taunts. Hunger in full force. You slip off Kidra and lean yourself up against the wall, struggling to draw back your bow to cover the escape as the Raconturks book it behind Kidra.

“Hurry, hurry!” you yell, mostly to comfort yourself. They’re moving as fast as they can, what with the few that need help stumbling over to the future doorway.

A pair leaning on each other bring up the rear. Neither of them are moving fast, one because he’s on the elder side of the human lifespan, and the other because her swollen foot is pointing at a terribly wrong angle. You rush forward, letting loose on the arrow in your grip to hit at the approaching shadows. But the exhaustion is there, and your aim shifts at the last second. It flies in an aborted arc, exploding on the ground a yard away. A sheen of gold and blue glitter poofs up from the point of impact, nearly knocking you delirious, and completely making the two wipe out.

“Stop helping us, please!” the elder yells. He untangles himself from the younger, hauls himself up, and leans down to reach for the other. Halfway there, his back squeals, and he wrenches himself back up, standing stiff as a grimace cuts across his face. “Never mind… Please help her.”

The young Raconturk crawls on her elbows as quick as she can, pointing at him and motioning for you to get him to safety. He tries to shuffle off by himself, wincing with every step. It’s only a few more yards to where the others are rushing inside. It’s only a few more yards until the shadows catch up.

“Selene! Grab her!” you yell.

Selene swoops over to the young woman and scoops her up. You swing around to the man and start rushing him to the wall. He’s trying not to scream out in pain as you surely agitate his injuries, but you throw it out of your mind in the moment. Just as you reach the doorway and toss him into the waiting arms of the others, you hear a screech from back down the hall. The young woman flails in Selene’s hold. The Source’s self wraps around her middle and violently tugs against…

_Oh shit._

A tendril of shadow has zipped out and a chain of fearlings grasp at each other until the far-most one has its hand around the broken ankle. It yanks and digs its claws in, twisting the foot even more. Selene, for all her power, still tries to win the tug of war. You rush over, pulse pounding against your eardrums, mouth too dry to swallow, and underneath the new adrenaline rush is that same exhaustion from before. Tooth calls your name.

You drag out a few pellets, losing a few as you stumble and juggle for a second. The rest of the shadows are coming up quickly, so you don’t think. You shove the handful into the laughing mouth of the fearling and bash its hand with your bow. Whether the multiple explosions or the hit makes it drop the Raconturk, you don’t know, all you know is that you’re limping against each other back to safety.

There’s a small flash of dark light, and the confused grumblings of the fearlings. Selene flies back to meet you, form noticeably smaller again. Someone catches you and drags you into the new elevator, and the door shuts before the shadows can catch up.

You collapse on the floor, next to the panting young woman. Around you, the other Raconturks watch with varying degrees of worry and frustration. The door disappears, and the elevator starts to grind its way down into the Archives.

_“You made it.”_ Selene sounds so far away, so diminished. The blob is large enough to settle on your chest as you lay there. You nod, lick your lips, and make to close your eyes.

The young Raconturk starts twisting next to you. You sit up in time to see her backing away, leg outstretched until she hits one of the walls. Everyone else moves to the other side of the elevator, and your vision stops swimming in time for you to see a familiar dark, swirling mark creeping up her ankle.

*************

“Answer me,” his daughter demands. Her hands clench at her sides, shaking despite how stiff she holds them. Kozmotis stands up straight and looks her in the eye.

“Seraphina,” he repeats softly. “That’s your name. The name your mother, Xiorena, and I gave you when you were born.”

Her lip trembles. At the name of her mother, she inhales sharply and lowers her head so that he cannot see her face anymore. He takes a few steps forward.

“He told you, didn’t he?” She raises her face back up to him. The evidence of unshed tears is there, re-burying itself under a new cold-hard glare. “That good for nothing star captain told you! You forced it out of him!”

She hurls a lightning bolt at him. It blasts electric-blue light all around him, burning his eyes and blinding him. When it strikes him, it feels just as he always imagined a bolt from the blue would be.

First, there’s only force. Then his whole body seizes up. And then, it releases all of that tension. The room tumbles top over bottom until he stops and the wind gets knocked from him. He suddenly realizes he’s falling face first onto the stone floor, but all control over his limbs left him seconds ago. His head jolts and turns for a moment, and he can finally see one of his hands, outstretched before him, spasming as if it’s a giddy tarantula. Then the smell of burning hair washes over him.

“No… No, no, no!” Someone kneels over him, frantically checking his limbs, pressing into the pulse points on his wrists and neck. He’s flipped over, and Seraphina leans in, creases worrying her face.

_Sera… Seraphina…_ He wants to reassure her. He can’t blame her for acting this way; he might have done the same if he believed himself forgotten and abandoned for so long. But his jaw doesn’t work properly anymore to verbally communicate. He tries to reignite the silver bond, willing the power through his mind, his heart. It doesn’t move past his fingers.

“Please don’t—I didn’t mean…”

“It’s all right,” another, calmer voice soothes. The rabbit leans in beside her, magic already at his claws. He reaches out only to be forced back by a harsh wind.

“Pooka, if you so much as—!”

“Sera…” It slurs out of his mouth, but at least he has control over his muscles again. There’s a tic under one eye, and his fingertips still shake, but they’ll at least process his commands. Her face snaps back to him.

“Are you all right?” she whispers. He nods and slowly sits himself up. She back up beyond arm’s length, swallows, and then shakes her head again. “Well, you don’t deserve to be!”

“Probably not,” he replies, gently stretching out his arms. His skin sears at his chest. _Ah. That’s where the smoking is coming from._

“Do you know what I’ve been through?” She swoops down to him again, clutching his throat and forcing him to face her. It’s a tight grip, but only at his jaw. There’s no pressure at his neck; no real danger to choke. “Do you know what _you_ have put me through?!”

“I’m afraid I do not, Sera. Not beyond vanishing into darkness only to accost you when you were a roaming star.” He licks his lips and begs the silver to reappear. Only a sputter at his fingertips. “And I’m so sorry. Even in my altered state, I should not have… I should never have become weak enough to…” He reaches up and covers her hand with his. “I thought they had killed you.”

She tosses him back to the floor and tries to move away, but he grasps her hand as tight as he can manage. He holds her fingers in both of his own hands, kneeling as his daughter pauses, letting her arm angle as far as it will go. However, she faces away from him.

“Seraphina,” he calls again, softly. “As I said months ago, I am not the father you knew. Nor can I ever be Pitchiner again. But I am trying to seek a new life as Kozmotis.”

“‘A man with no history and no future,’” she spits. “That’s what you said to me then.”

He swallows against the lump in his throat. “I was wrong.”

She tenses and shivers. He carefully lifts himself to his feet, swaying and squeezing her hand so he doesn’t let go of it among the dying dizziness. As he lessens the pressure, a bit of silver blossoms from his palm. It spreads in either direction, coiling and spiraling up his arm and over his shoulder until it settles at his chest. Likewise, it clambers up his daughter’s arm. She flinches at the sensation, but he refuses to let her go. Not again.

“I remember that last night at home,” she finally says. She turns to face him, and though she towers over him by a good one or two feet, the look of terror and defeat on her face renders her so young and small despite it. “You were called away to deal with a bunch of fearlings terrorizing one of the nearby villages. I heard you and mother talking about it even though I was supposed to be in bed. In fact, I rushed back down the hall because you were coming to say goodbye.”

He remembers, too. The emotions of that night jumble through him. It was a routine purge of the shadows, but he was determined to do his damndest to keep everyone safe. He was Kozmotis Pitchiner! If not him, then who? Regardless, he also remembers that solemn walk to kiss his wife and daughter goodbye one last time. They all knew it was a possibility, but in some way he never did actually expect it to be the last time.

“I slipped under the covers just as you came in,” she continues. She laughs once. “I swore you saw right through my fake sleeping. You gave me a kiss on my forehead and told me, ‘I promise to return in time to take you sailing tomorrow.’ But—” She takes a deep breath. “But if you remember anything about me at that age—”

“There was nothing that could keep you from that boat.”

The patterns of the twisting silver grow more intricate as they wind over their bodies, and as the threads keep laying, the thicker they become. What started as a barely-visible trail has cascaded into broad outlines of silvery coils and waves and spirals all over them. The glows at each of their chests become brighter and brighter.

She nods. “Right. Nothing. Not even during an emergency lockdown.

“I managed to slip out before the villa guards could finish their final checks. The starfish were schooling nearby and I couldn’t _not_ go see.”

She closes her eyes and smiles. Kozmotis’ heart almost folds in on itself. For as much as she looks like Xiorena, the mischievous smile is all Seraphina’s. He recognizes it now. And then it fades again.

“I returned to the villa in time to… to see her… f-fall.”

Utter despair flashes through the bond, and Kozmotis’ eyes cloud over as they fill with sympathetic tears. He looks up at Seraphina. Her thousand-yard stare focuses on the bit of boat on the floor. Anger, self-hatred, and guilt float through.

“Seraphina,” he whispers. He gulps and reaches one of his hands up. It inches forward so slowly, stopping every time a hint of reluctance startles through the threads. But eventually, she allows him to cup her cheek in his hand, to wipe her tears away with his thumb, to tell her, “It’s not your fault.”

She collapses to her knees as she sobs. A wind kicks up, tossing the room over itself, threatening to dislodge his grip. Rumbles of moving earth boil under his feet, but he fights to stay there. He will not let go of her again.

“Sera!” he calls. “Sera, please!”

But nothing answers him through the connection beyond the… oh, the panic. 

“I’m sorry!” he yells. “I’m so sorry for what happened. It never should have happened, and I should never have given up on you so soon.”

“Did you fall then?” Her voice is low, grumbling and rising to a dull roar like the thunder backing her up. “Did you give up so easily that you gave yourself to the shadows right away? Did you even try?!”

The threads start breaking. The curling designs that had grown over the both of them, the strong glow of the connection. They dim as the new storm grows and grows. Kozmotis can barely feel any of her anymore, and he fights as hard as he can to keep them in place.

“How long did it take the great Kozmotis Pitchiner to give up his morality!”

“They ripped it from me,” he says. He reaches up to the locket and swings the chain from his neck. He presses it to her own hand, the one currently threatening to send another round of lightning through him. “I imprisoned them all! Every last shadow I could find and bring in from the farthest reaches of the Golden Age! I threw them all into a prison and set myself to guard it. To let them live out the rest of their eternity knowing that Kozmotis Pitchiner would not tolerate their reign of terror!”

The storm eases a bit. Seraphina stares at the locket for a moment before cupping it in her hands and opening the clasp.

“But… I underestimated them,” Kozmotis continues. “I thought imprisonment would be the end of it, thought it would ease my grief. Instead, I left myself wide open to their machinations.

“Over a few years, their voices ate at me, wore me down. Until one day, they gave me one last false hope: that you were alive, but trapped in the prison with the shadows. That’s when I opened the door. And when Pitchiner died.”

“You forgot me.”

“I didn’t plan to. And even through the worst of it, you and your mother held onto me like ghosts of my past. It’s more accurate to say I couldn’t remember properly.”

She shakes her head and draws her hand out of his. He forces himself to let her go, but the last tether remains at their chests to connect them. Seraphina glances behind her and re-opens the doorway she had blocked with rocks.

“Pooka,” she calls. The rabbit peeks his head around the corner. “Come here.”

He walks over, green already at his fingertips. He touches each of them, and the softness overcomes.

“Thank you, Pooka.”

“Name’s Bunny, ma’am.”

“Does my father speak the truth?” She glares at the rabbit, who in turn watches Kozmotis. He heaves a deep sigh and nods.

“I personally wish it wasn’t the case,” he says. “But the Boog—former Boogeyman here has opted for a new way of living.”

“Do you forgive him for what he did to your kind?”

“Hell no!” The rabbit screws up his face. Seraphina’s connection turns cold until the rabbit catches her attention again. “I’ll never forgive him for it. And maybe you can’t forgive him, either. But the Guardians need your help, or else we risk the shadows infecting the whole planet. And possibly beyond.”

“I don’t care about your war,” she replies.

“Fine. But can you care a bit about the planet? You can’t sulk here forever if it gets overrun.”

Seraphina goes silent. Kozmotis reaches out to her again. She flinches, but allows him to rest his hand on her arm.

“I cannot demand you to like me because I’ve changed. I can wish, but I am at your discretion and mercy. However, it is very dire that we find a way to dispel some shadow cloud cover at Ganderly, or else it will not matter who is and is not forgiven.

“One favor is all I beg. If it is your wish to disappear after that—” His breath hitches. “I will honor your wish. But I find it hard to believe that you truly don’t care.”

“And why not?”

Kozmotis looks her directly in the eye. “Because you could have let me perish at the equinox months ago. Instead, you drove the shadows away from me and covered me in a blanket. And then you could have let me trudge through the Arctic and miss my deadline for returning to the Pole. Instead, you helped me there faster.”

The rabbit lifts a brow. Seraphina glances at him, then Kozmotis, and she sighs, nodding. The rabbit widens his eyes and leans against the wall.

“One favor,” she murmurs. “I will grant you one favor.”

She stands again. The silver thread has thickened over the course of their conversation. It’s now a thin cord, one not nearly as robust as the one linking Kozmotis and his partner, but far less fragile than what came before. As Seraphina rises to her full height, the link vanishes. It does not break this time, however, and a warm sensation lingers over his heart.

She leads them out to the entrance of her home. “Let’s go.”


	100. Promise of Trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 100 freakin chapters yall! i should have known, given how bad i am at estimating scope, that part 4 would NOT be "only 50k at most." in fact, it's looking to be the longest part overall, probably breaching the 100k-120k mark when all is said and done. but honestly, im still having fun so lets keep going!

Seraphina slides out of her home and drifts to the bottom of the canyon, not bothering to wait for Kozmotis or the rabbit, nor even to offer them an easier way down. They both look over the edge as she hovers by the base of the rocks, then up to each other. Kozmotis sighs and drags some silver back up.

“Nuh-uh.” The rabbit shakes his head and taps his foot. Whatever defenses his daughter had placed around her home are no longer an issue. He leaps into the hole and almost instantly reappears next to her.

Kozmotis tries the thread between him and Seraphina. She tenses at first, and raises her hand over it as if to strike. But then she just looks at him, no expression on her face. He uses the opportunity to travel through it.

“Stay close,” she says.

The skies darken instantly, the bottoms of the clouds flashing with lightning and churning in the sudden winds. Said winds thrash around all of them, driving Kozmotis and the rabbit closer to Serpahina until it winds so tightly around them they almost cannot keep hold. At the last moment, a small flash of white enters the vortex with them.

And then they lift off.

Kozmotis cries out in surprise and worry as they ascend so rapidly as to make his ears pop. Nearby, the rabbit is also thrashing and yelling, but their voices don’t reach each other. The winds somehow tighten even more, and the air becomes nothing but a pressure-filled tunnel. Just as he thinks his head will explode and this will have been for nothing, everything clears.

Well, not everything. Ashen taste. Stale smell. The sense that something was just around the corner, waiting to spring on the unsuspecting mind and devour it.

Kozmotis opens his jaw a few times to try and clear the pressure. The rabbit does the same nearby. Seraphina stands a few yards away at the edge of the same cliff they left only a few hours ago, hands behind her back as she watches the dark invasion of Ganderly.

“Disgusting,” she mutters. She then flicks her attention over to her left. “Well… what do you want, little one, hm?”

The same flash of white light from before hovers in a circle around her hands. A moonbeam. The Man in the Moon must have sent another one down just before they took off. Kozmotis nears in order to hear its message.

“The Man In the Moon thanks you, Mother Nature, Seraphina Pitchiner, for helping the Guardians in this time of dire need. He—”

“I have promised one favor to him,” she responds, gesturing to Kozmotis. “I have promised nothing else. My thoughts on this never-ending war have not changed simply because he has.”

The moonbeam circles silently for a moment before restarting its message. She allows it to move past the point she cut it off this time, though she rolls her eyes as it continues to ramble.

“He wishes to plead the case for a further partnership, as well as to ask that you not give up hope again.

“He wishes to remind you that tragedy can blind us in anger, guilt, and grief. However, tragedy settled into a heart is a form of fear, a form that roots deeply, choking out other emotions that try to grow.”

Seraphina doesn’t move except once: she glances at Kozmotis for a split-second before hunching over the light even more.

“Tragedy becomes familiar in this way. He does not blame you for tending to this familiar root for so long, as he has had to prune his own away time after time. He wishes to remind you that once, wonder and curiosity blossomed within you, and the tragic failure of the adult meant to guide your way in life should not be reason enough to kill them like common weeds.”

“Are you quite done?” She waves the moonbeam away.

“The Man In the Moon begs that you ask yourself, truly, what you want from these circumstances, as this action and those of earlier in the year do not hasten your long-held wish. He asks you to consider if you ever intended said wish to come true at all, if your hundreds of years of running away from its otherwise swift completion is any measure of commitment.”

At this, Seraphina lets out an indignant noise and thrusts the moonbeam away from them with a burst of wind. It tumbles a few yards, and then floats back to give its closing statements. Seraphina drowns the rest out with bursts of thunder and attempts to drive earthen spikes through it. Kozmotis winces at each one, trying not to imagine his partner meeting their terrible end on their sharp points.

Finally finished, the moonbeam loops around Kozmotis and the rabbit and then darts off across the land, presumably in search of a way back to the moon. Seraphina takes a deep inhale and straightens up, returning to her perch on the cliff. He trudges up next to her, trying to find some words to say.

_What did you wish for?_ he wants to ask. _Does it involve me? Was it caused by me and my evil?_

“Sera—” 

A hasty burst of wind shushes him. Seraphina holds out her arms and rises on the gale. The thunder and lightning from earlier reignites in full force. Rain-heavy clouds flank the dark ones over the island, the ones fueled by the spire and shadows. And the shadows all take immediate notice.

The flood of fearlings in the water leaps up as one arcing and spiraling up to reach Seraphina as she works her magic.

“No!” Kozmotis yells.

He summons as many cords as he can at the edge of the cliff and throws them around the column of shadows. A glob of the fearlings break off and start rushing down the tethers. Kozmotis yanks back as hard as he can, garroting the column and making bout half of it slide down and break away. But a slim portion of the shadows still reach ever higher, until they’re nearly able to snatch her foot.

He digs into his pouch, dragging out a few spire shards. He tries to grip them as little as he can, despite closing his entire fist. The texture and the vague presence of the shadows makes him shiver. He wraps them in his tethers and tosses them out again, sending enough magic up the strings to activate them. There’s a small explosion, a flash of muddled silver. In the next moment, Kozmotis has to brace himself against the cacophony of voices shouting through the bonds. But within that noise is the power he needs to braid them all together into the strongest rope he can manage. He spirals it up the column of shadows until it reaches the peak and wraps its way back down.

“Rabbit!” he yells as the other end starts to swing by.

“Got it!”

The rabbit leaps as high as he can and grabs the end, dragging it back down to the cliff side. At the same time, they pull, digging their feet into the soft soil. The extra burst of magic starts fading as quickly as it shouted forth, but that’s all right. They don’t need it to last for the whole fight.

“Seraphina!” Kozmotis yells, hoping she can hear. “We can hold them back for only a bit! Hurry!”

There’s a small falter in the storm as his words echo, but it’s not enough to disrupt the waterspout she drags from the water, tossing fearlings miles as they slip from the vortex.

_Just a little more…_ The fearlings at the very top of the tendril individualize as reach their terrible claws out, straining against the ropes that still hold them back as she rises a little higher in the air. _Just a little more…_

The rain clouds tumble over the shadow ones, weaving over and through them. Kozmotis can see them draw back and crash as stylized wave formations, slowly throttling the dark clouds’ hold over the area. Seraphina gives a loud yell, letting lightning zip from her head to her toes and back again before releasing the astounding display out towards the spire. The tall crystal instantly attracts the electricity, and a vibrant pulse of magenta meets it halfway up to the top.

There’s a sudden still moment amid the chaos as every sentient being in range stops and stares at the sparking madness.

The energy builds and builds and builds until a bead of chaotic light glows at the tip of the spire. It rapidly expands into something resembling a small sun, and then shoots into the atmosphere. The force of the energy blasts out in a wave, dissipating a large portion of the fearlings in the water, and tossing out more from the treehouse itself. The boom follows close after, generating another wave that tears Kozmotis’ hands away from the rope. The rabbit collapses, too, and the silver shrivels up as the sky lights up with streak after streak of blinding light.

Kozmotis finally opens his eyes, blinking away the spots of color. Rain drizzles on him, cooling his face and easing the rope burns all over his hands. It releases the smell of dirt into the air, the good kind of smell that promises life and fresh plants in the morning. And as the dots of color all subside, he gazes up at the full night sky, one usually only visible far away from cities and towns. The Milky Way trails down, one end leading from the sliver of moon to Ganderly.

And that sliver of moon, though mostly dark, quickly gathers a lunar halo of moonbeams as soon as the way is clear.

“Yeah! Manny!” The rabbit bounces in place, watching the cloud of moonbeams thicken and start to descend to the earth. “We gottem now!”

The rabbit looks over to Kozmotis, smile fading to a stern neutral. He gestures to Ganderly with his head once and takes off, not bothering to coordinate further. Though a small land bridge rising from the water give him a good idea of where they’ll pass through next. Kozmotis starts to take off, but halts when Seraphina lands in front of him.

“Sera! Thank you so much!” He reaches out and grasps her hand in his. A faint wave of silver designs flashes at the contact point. “I don’t know what to say.”

She blinks and retrieves her hand. “Think on it as you fight, and let me know what you come up with.”

The mere implication of her intending to see him again is enough for him to, right then and there, refuse death or corruption this day. He does, after all, have a long-held promise to keep to her. He nods gratefully and places his hand over his heart, walking backwards until he reaches the edge of the cliff.

“F… f-fath… er.”

He freezes at the word. Seraphina turns her head away and closes her eyes, hand shaking at her side and clenching the locket. She takes a deep breath and looks him in the eye.

“When you return, please bring your… new friend.” He’s not one-hundred percent all right with the way she says that, but he lets it slide for now. She continues, “I promise not to hurt them… again… But I think they and I have a lot to discuss.”

“I will do my best,” he replies. “But I must retrieve them first.”

He steps off the edge of the cliff, using his newfound energy and tethers to slow his fall. Soon enough, he’s catching up to the rabbit in time to fight their way across the land bridge.

*************

There’s maybe five to seven minutes until the elevator touches down in the Archives. No one says anything as the young Raconturk struggles and scratches at her quickly turning leg, not even as he eyes dart over everyone and she starts crying. Tooth slides up to you.

“I… I hate to ask, but—” she says.

“They got one.” You think you might be sick.

“How much time do they have?”

_Is that how it looks from the outside? Rina was infected by a Nightmare Man almost instantly. Was it because she was young, small, or incapacitated that it happened so fast? A Nightmare Man also got me, though… But Iinstantly grabbed at the shadows to drag them out._

You drop to your knees next to her. She tries to press away from you, babbling incoherent warnings through her sobs. Tooth calls your name.

“How much time?” she asks again.

“Not much,” you answer, bringing your power up. “M-maybe a little more if I…”

You reach your fingers out, and the fresh shadows jump at them before they even connect. The young woman freezes up, eye twitching. You try to reach in, but there’s only so far the shadows will let you. Concentrating, remembering those last, frantic minutes in the lair when you got your mark, you take a deep breath and exert your will over the shadows. They shudder and then start wrapping through your power.

_How does the pull work?_ your mind blares. _What about derivatives of Change force other magics to pull towards it? Is it a universal response or is it just the magics I’ve encountered so far?_

The shadows tighten around your connection and the young woman whimpers. Squinting open one eye, you see the mark rapidly curling up over her knee, disappearing under her pants. She starts to squirm and nearly yanks away from you.

“Calm down!” you yell, activating your parental voice for the first time in ages. Immediately she freezes again. You hold the shadows back as much as you can and look her in the eye. “Help me out here, okay?”

“How?”

“Uh…” you scramble for something. Something she could possible do to help, something this human is capable of. You hit upon it, and though you think it sounds silly coming from your mouth, you say, “Believe. Picture yourself like you were ten minutes ago. I’m—” You nod to yourself. “I’m gonna set you right.”

You unwind one of your hands from the murk and hover it over the quiver. There’s one moment where you hesitate. _Hypocrite! Weakling! Liar!_ all ring through your head, and your grip on the shadows slips. But you push it from your mind, exist in the moment, and summon the triple Source. You press it into Tooth’s hand.

“This is the vial with the triple Source,” you tell her. “I need you or your fairies or one of the others to hold it under their nose and open it for three seconds.” You nod to the Raconturk. “When the Sources filter out, inhale as much as you can. This might hurt regardless, but it should help.”

Tooth flutters her wings and hums, but she holds the container out and flips it open. One, two, three. The Raconturk inhales rapidly, nearly hyperventilating. But when the glow overtakes them, they quiet and still. 

“Selene? If you please.” Her form lays over your hands. Another one, two, three, and you join them in a similar headspace.

She covers your wrists where they’re visible, and the sensation joins the others. It’s overwhelming, but it’s also comforting. You reach up and rip open the pant leg to see just how far it’s gotten. Over the knee and holding.

“This is happening,” you say, first to reassure yourself that it’s possible. “This _is_ happening,” you repeat with newfound confidence. You dig in again.

The Sources have indeed loosened the grip of the shadows. Thankfully, it was such a new and shallow infection, like yours had been, that none of the shadows have settled yet. You reach—physically and with your magic—until you have a whole wad of them. Slowly, you pull, wrapping them over and around your glowing fingers until the ends pull all the way loose. Gently setting them to the side, you reach back in, letting your eyes go into a soft focus and simply feeling your way through the magic. Another handful. Another.

All the while, the Raconturk makes small, faraway noises of pain, but you also hear her whisper occasionally, “This is happening. This is happening.”

You give it one final search through the magic, one final sweep of the leg. Your eyes come back into focus, and you look over her knee and ankle. If you squint, there’s a very faded mark. It’s so close to her skin tone, however, it looks more like a birthmark than anything else. Nodding, you release yourself from her leg and drift your mind over to the wad of shadows writhing in the middle of the floor.

A pellet appears in your hand. Normally you’d only have a vague clue as to which mixture you have due to color, but with all the weird shit flowing through your system at the moment, you can identify everything. Memories, stories, fun, light, and a pinch of dreams for good measure, as it is in ninety percent of the mixtures. You add another boost of creativity to activate it all, and slam your hand into the middle of the maggot-like mass. It screams, squeals, and after a second, pleads for life.

“Not today,” you say out loud. And you dig in further until you hit upon its core. This close, the explosion instantly takes over the entire wad, turning it into a hunk of glittery, bright magics.

“Gottem,” you say, swaying a little too far back and forth. Finally, you tip over, expecting the stone floor to do you in. Instead, you hear a series of chirps and the wind gets knocked out of you again as your chest lands on something.

“All right, all right,” Tooth murmurs as she catches you.

She lets you lean on her all the way down, humming a little and patting your shoulder gently. The tunnel vision clears about halfway down, though there’s still a little fog in your head and you want nothing more than to sit and do nothing for at least twelve hours. But you admit, knowing that you can shake off some of the side effects by using the proper Source could be useful. You admit it… but you remain reluctant.

_This was different,_ you say to yourself. _This was about saving someone. About setting something right._

The conversation with your former supervisor and colleague kicks up again, though, and your stomach clenches.

When the elevator comes to rest, after the Raconturks lead you through the rooms until you hit Fables-Cross-Mystery, as Katherine whoops in delight as more of her Raconturks and all of her precious books join her, Tooth drags you to the side behind one of the server racks.

You hold your hands up in surrender, just trying not to pass out, saying, “Look, I’m sorry about earlier, okay? I shouldn’t’ve dragged you out of the air.”

“Easy,” she says, half-giggling. “I’m sorry, too. Probably could have handled that better than just trying to slap sense into you. But I meant it when I said I admire your stubbornness on this. But, well…

“We’re going to come up to some more difficult decisions in a little bit. And you and I both _think_ we know what we’re going to do in the thick of it, but you never really do. Frankly, I think it’s less important to try and be okay with a hard decision than it is to make peace with what might be a wrong decision.”

“I saved her, though…”

“Yeah, you did. She’s going to be just fine and live a whole life thanks to you.” She reaches for you and wraps her arms around your shoulders. “But you did end up proving me right about the Sources, huh?”

You huff and start to pull away. She drags you back. “Sorry, sorry… I meant that to be more empathetic than it came out. What I meant was, now that you have proof that the Sources can be used for good when controlled properly, I guess that scares you even more.”

“Yeah.” You sniff.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you suck at magic,” she says. “You’re new, but I mean just look at what you did back there! You believed, and the magic came so easily. And she believed in you.”

You peek around the rack. The Raconturk is asleep, only the vaguest glow at her fingertips anymore. You clench your hands a few times, envying her sleep. Maybe an hour is all you’re going to get after this. Two if you can beg it.

“If you continue to trust yourself like you just did, you’ll be an expert in no time.”

“Thanks,” you reply. After a moment, you return the hug. “Things are going very fast.”

“Yeah. But I think you’ll keep up. All we have on you is centuries of field experience. And you have, what, ninety years of devotion to chemistry and science studying? More than all of us combined.” She leans back and rubs her eyes, then runs one of her fingers over one in a gentle circle.

“You okay?” you ask, tapping her wrist.

“I’ll be fine. I just… hate being so useless like this.”

“Uh, you were the one slicing up fearlings from the back of Kidra!”

She rolls her eyes. “The finesse is gone. I’m just mashing my way through with this, happy to be in the fight, but my craft is shattered.” She sighs. “I have this stupid idea that if I use the Source again, I’ll at least be able to see long enough to be of help in the short run.”

“Tooth… I’ll be honest I don’t think the Sources work like that. Even if you used the one your powers derive from, it still might just be an ultra-temporary boost with load of consequences. It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just that I don’t know how to help. But I think you’re a lot better off than you think you are.”

“I can’t even find a way to save my family,” she mutters.

“Not right now, maybe.” You draw he back into the hug. “But I believe you will one day. One day soon, even.”

“But what if—”

“Soon,” you insist. She cocks her head, then a sly smile works across her face.

“All right. I trust you with that.” She holds out her hand. You shake on it. “But let’s focus on getting the spire down first.”

“Deal.” You yawn, too loudly and suddenly to cover up, and Tooth bursts out laughing.

“How about a small break first?”

Nodding, you wrap your arm over her shoulder, and the two of you wander back to the middle of things, where Katherine, Nightlight, and Jack are rushing back and forth among all the Raconturks also rushing around. Tooth leans you up against one of the shelves, and you close your eyes for a moment, enjoying the small respite.


	101. Crossing Paths

One short rest later, Katherine transports you as close to the spire as she can comfortably get. You’re about three floors up and five corridors over from where you plan to strike, but that’s the least of your problems. As soon as you all exit the elevator chamber, you can hear the rumbling of the fearlings, and at the edges of their noise, a hollow, chilling call coming from, you assume, the Nightmare Man.

“These halls smell like fear,” Toothiana signs. Katherine writes out the words for you, slowly signing along as you read them. “We’re going to have to be very careful. And not impulsive,” she adds nodding toward Nightlight. He sighs, blowing out the air hard enough to mess up his already jagged hair. But he nods in agreement.

Toothiana then signals you and Jack. He carefully flies you around to two more guarded areas of the main library. He almost gets distracted by a bunch of fearlings playing in shredded book pages as if they’re snow—making angels and tossing the shreds up to flutter down—but he stays on track long enough for you to plant one of your signal stones, and a few of your pellets in a discreet area.

Your second excursion takes you to almost the other end of Ganderly, and there are a few moments where you think the fearlings might catch on. One in particular stays on your trail long enough that it throws the whole operation off its intended timeline a few minutes, but luckily the twitchy shadows gets distracted by a picture book. Jack plants another signal stone on top of a pile of pellets.

You make the mistake of watching the fearling, however. It carefully turns the pages of the book, eyes less hollow than a few minutes before as it had chased you. As it sits and grasps the book, its hunched form resembles less of a horror, and more of a child immersed in a book made for them. Like Jordan when he was five, or Alisah a few times when you were visiting.

Just as you start to leave your hiding spot, the fearling lets out a horrible burbling and rips out the books pages, shoving as many of them into its mouth as it can. Another comes up and they hiss at each other, circling like feral cats. Jack returns from his work. He looks where you look, and then pulls you backwards.

“Trust me, I’ve thought the same thing,” he writes on a paper. He catches your eye, letting you see his exhaustion and pity. “I want to help them, too. But we can’t get too sentimental.”

“How do you deal with this?” you write back. “Especially since you’re the Guardian out in the field with the kids most out of all of them?”

He heaves a controlled, quiet-as-he-can-manage sigh and glances at the fearlings again.

“I try to think about how many more un-corrupted kids are out there, needing my attention and a few good snow days to remember how to have fun. Especially if their having fun prevents them from this.” There’s a glisten at his eyes. “I dunno what Pitch did to convince or manipulate or force them into this half-life, but I’m glad he’s stopped. And I regret that I didn’t stop him sooner.”

“Aren’t you his friend?”

“I’m Kozmotis’ friend. He’s a guy who needs friends. Pitch can sit and spin.”

He drags you on another wind back to where Katherine, Nightlight, and Tooth wait for you. Tooth and Kidra perk up first as you approach, turning to face you. Kidra moves of their own accord, jolting up the hallway to greet you with a few licks and a quiet whine. You run your hand over their face plate and nuzzle into them a bit, but after the moment passes, you let them go and huddle with the others.

“All right,” Katherine writes out. “Any objections? Any reason to turn back now?”

You all look to each other, and as the message gets communicated to Tooth, her feathers rise and fall as she scowls and shakes her head. None of you object. The only thing left to do is to follow through on the plans, and keep all, if not most, of you alive to make a quick strike back against Burgess after this. In the moment, however, you pause and close your eyes. You summon Kozmotis, Jordan, and Alisah into your mind’s eye and gaze at each of them.

 _Goodbye,_ you say to each of them. _I love you, and I’ll see you on the other side._

You open your eyes, string your bow, and ready yourself to step through the line to take down the spire. Selene slides up next to you.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

_Boom._

The light glowing from Katherine’s clenching fist is currently being mirrored in two other parts of Ganderly, and since everything seems to be going in their favor today, the light has attracted at least two fearlings willing to take a swipe at them. The offset explosions in the distance let them know when to hunker down as a moment of silence turns into the chittering rush of shadows from all over the place. Thankfully, in their rush, they pass by all of you, though Nightlight twitches under the pile you all make over him so that his own light doesn’t give you all away.

Once free, however, he leads the charge through the nearest doorway.

The fearlings on the other side are too startled to move fast enough, and they disappear with a few, clean slashes of his daggers. The next few waves are a little more hardy and wary, but only just enough to make their ends the least bit drawn out.

You shoot arrow after arrow, trying to stay ahead of Nightlight at first, but abandoning that notion as he proves to be too fast. Instead, you try to keep the way clear for Tooth, Katherine, and Jack, who’re trying to save as much of their power for the spire.

The fearlings don’t make it easy, though, and as you pass through an open-air corridor—it’s new, courtesy of the shadows—the chattering gets so loud that you can see the Nightmare Man sift out of the masses to search for the real culprits. Nightlight is so far ahead that neither you nor Katherine can stop him from flying straight up and digging one of his daggers into its face, from absent jawbone to vague brow and across both its hollow eyes.

The scream it lets loose is more like a beat, low note. It vibrates the entire place around you, but you can barely make out that anything is happening besides that. Nevertheless, it’s too much for a moment and you pause to shake your head loose. Katherine scoops you up as she dashes by on Kailash. She chucks you into the saddle, and the vertigo is enough to distract you from the Nightmare Man’s howl.

The spire is just ahead of you, though your destination is a few floors down. Katherine yanks back on Kailash, causing her to rear and honk for a moment. In the next, however, an ear-splitting shout blasts through the floorboards, nearly sending a bunch of splinters into your face.

“Tooth!” Katherine yells. You whistle for Kidra, and they immediately pop a u-turn and dash back to you. You quickly search for Selene, only to see her dashing up to follow Nightlight. You try to cry out, but it’s too late. Jack sprays a layer of ice over the surrounding fearlings, keeping them at bay long enough for all of you, sans Nightlight and Selene, to dive to the next floor.

*************

It doesn’t take long for the fearlings to jump them as the cross the bridge. There’s far fewer of them, but thanks to the overwhelming amount in the first place, they’re up against a lot.

“Duck!”

Kozmotis slides on his side, taking the opportunity to send out more tethers to grab and hold the tendril of shadows currently attacking them. It strains against his hold, and then rabbit’s remaining boomerang bashes through it to put it out of its misery. The tethers collapse, and the rabbit yanks Kozmotis up by his collar to continue on.

The looming spire in the distance the biggest one they’ve come across. Appropriate, maybe, as they risked too much going after the smallest one. But as the saying goes…

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” the rabbit growls as the spire pulses. He takes a glance up at the sky, shoulders relaxing a bit as he registers the mass of moonbeams starting to close in. “So let’s drop it.”

He taps his foot, and Kozmotis tumbles down yet another hole. A paw roughly grabs him and tosses him up out of another hole. The rabbit yells, “Gettem, Boogeyman!”

Kozmotis re-orients to the world around him at the peak of his ascent. They’re closer to the library now, and completely in the thick of the shadows. Several columns of pulsating darkness rise up to meet him hundreds of dozens of teeth and claws grinning up to slice him to shreds.

Not today.

He thinks of Seraphina, of his partner, of his friends and new life, and he channels all the hope he can manage this far behind the shadows’ line until he shines almost as bright at Nightlight. The sliver bursts out of him in a spiky sphere, piercing and cutting through the various waves of fearlings until they all scream and peter out into the ocean and other shadows to lick their wounds.

He may have overdone it a bit, though. As soon as the silver fades, Kozmotis nearly blacks out as the energy retreats from him as well. Which is not a god thing, as the ground it coming up to meet him at an alarming rate. He tries to summon at least a few to cushion his fall, but they sputter out at his fingertips. He clenches his eyes shut right before he expects the painful thud, and he only knows it comes because the rabbit whoops in glee at the exact moment.

Except… He’s swinging, blood rushing to his head. There’s a wind whipping at his hair and robes. He opens his eyes and has to shut them again as quickly as the brightest light this side of the cosmos shines above him.

Nightlight carries him by the ankle down to where the rabbit is. He drops Kozmotis onto the ground, under enough cover to let him catch his breath at the least. There’s a small brush of claws at the back of his neck, and he tenses. The softness radiates out from the point, however, and Kozmotis relaxes as a bit of energy comes back. If only it were true rejuvenation; sadly, the rabbit’s powers can only do so much with injuries and exhaustion.

Kozmotis rights himself as the rabbit scoops Nightlight up in a crushing hug. The poor spectral spirit squirms and grinds his teeth against the affection, finally shoving himself free and gesturing towards the spire. Kozmotis and the rabbit nod and follow his lead.

The Nightmare Man Bursts up from the shadows, a beautiful set of glowing gashes crossing its face. It twists in the sky, and then plunges one of its long arms into the shadows. Column-like claws spring up in waves, piercing up from the ground and stabbing at anything they can. Nightlight immediately confronts the nearest one, ripping it apart with a few eager strikes. Kozmotis and the rabbit follow him closely as he continues to carve out a path for them, swiping out with their own means of weaponry and magic where fearlings take too much of a chance.

As soon as Kozmotis steps over a rubble pile onto the torn floor of the library, he stops. The sounds of the battle pause for a split-second as he takes the moment to look around and marvel. Ganderly is incredible, even in its destruction. He can see all the evidence of its true grandeur just below the pulsing shadows, the torn woodwork, and the broken glass. A part of him knows this is probably the only chance he’ll have to admire the estate, so he takes it in as much as he can, overlaying his idea of what it should be until the rabbit yells at him again, and they have to press onward.

Nightlight zips through the confusing corridors with ease, and it’s all Kozmotis and the rabbit can do to keep up. Too many lefts, not enough rights, and an endless vision of the same straight walls. Kozmotis nearly loses sight of them, but all he does then is follow the sounds of disintegrating fearlings until he catches back up.

They loop around an entire floor at one point, bursting out onto a deck that used to be inside. From there, a wave of fearlings floods over them. The shadows scratch and bite and kick, knocking Kozmotis off-balance.

“Rabbit! Nightlight!” he screams, trying to achieve the right volume without leaving his mouth open for the fearlings to jump down and choke him. There’s a flash of a reply, and he starts hacking and garroting his way over to it. He nearly stumbles over the rabbit, who’s flat against the ground, trying to haul himself up while also kicking the nearest fearlings away. Kozmotis tosses a bunch of threads out, sewing up a bunch of the shadows and flinging them away from the prone Guardian. He doesn’t look as he holds his hand out; the paw wraps around it and Kozmotis nearly goes toppling down as the rabbit uses it to start his momentum into a high leap. At the apex, he grunts and flings his boomerang out and then with his other arm swiftly turns and tosses out a handful of pellets. The pile of fearlings parts long enough for them to spy Nightlight whirling away.

A flock of moonbeams sweeps in and whisks half the pile away. The fearlings scream and chitter as they lift off, and Nightlight finally manages to free himself. He takes a running start, only to stumble down out of the sky.

The rabbit bounds ahead and helps him up. He leans in for a moment, then yells back, “Nightlight’s still reeling from the thrashin’ the Nightmare Man gave him earlier! He can tell us where to meet up with the others, though!”

“Good!” Kozmotis glances around until he spies a hole in the wall that leads to a largely quiet area. “Let’s get to shelter!”

The rabbit follows him into the broken wood, the roar of yet more shadows growing louder as they all slide in. Kozmotis weaves a bunch of threads together over the opening and across several of the windows. Just before the fearlings reach it, he breaks another hard in his fist and imbues the woven walls with enough power to last independently until they get away. They just barely hold, but thankfully the small party is already screeching into another hallway and down a flight of stairs by the time he hears the faint breaking of threads.

They slow only when they’re in a surprisingly intact part of the library. The rabbit rights a toppled rocking chair and eases Nightlight into it. Kozmotis keeps the green glow in his peripherals as he scours the perimeter of the room, leaning his ear up against every doorway to make sure nothing else is closing in.

He backs up toward the others when a loud _thud_ pounds at the ceiling above him. The rabbit is immediately next to him as they stare upwards.

“Is Nightlight healed?” Kozmotis asks.

“Kinda.”

“Get him as fresh as you can. I’ll hold off whatever this is until you’re done.” There’s no need to ask him again. He leaps back over to the chair. The glow resumes, a little brighter, flashing in a hurry.

There’s a scratching noise, and a few of the floorboards rip up. Kozmotis readies his sword and some tethers. And then a familiar bellow rings out as the next _thud_ reveals an eyeless, beaked, familiar face.

Kidra shoves their head through the hole they made and bleats down at him.

*************

As soon as you’re all through to the next floor, Jack takes a spire shard and blasts the opening until it’s covered in a six-foot thick ice plug. He takes the opportunity to create thinner barriers along the windows, but he has to stop and catch his breath.

“Saddle!” Katherine orders.

You haul him up and carefully load him in alongside yourself as Katherine winds up for another breach. This time, you summon your power and plug the hole, the pellet weaving a dense mesh of golden plants that will hopefully deter the fearlings for a bit more time.

This level of the library is a complete and utter wreck. Katherine takes a moment in between shouts to rest and prepare, but she nearly wrecks herself as she cries out at the damage.

“Hundreds of years!” she screeches. You reach out and try to soothe her, but she just stands up in her stirrups. “Centuries of collecting! Organizing! Cataloging! I’ll have to scour the ends of the earth for evidence of some of those books, and then take another few decades to reconstruct them!”

“Katherine… Katherine, shh!” you beg. She slumps down and gives a small cough. Shaking her head, she just looks at you. You hold her arm. “We’ll get them. I promise, we’ll make this right.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I just wish it hadn’t come to this.”

“Hey!” Tooth yells. “Over here!”

You dash over. Kidra paces by a small portion of the wall, scratching at the floor and whining.

“What is it?” you ask.

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Kidra bleats and rises up on their hind legs, falling with a violent thunk onto their long claws. Tooth braces herself and tries to rein them back in, but Kidra just scrapes at the floor, dislodging a few boards, and then bellows as they rear again. Tooth rolls off, catching herself and stumbling out of the roll onto her feet and into the air, her fairies helping her stabilize. Kidra plunges down again, bursting through the floor properly and shoving their head through, giving a happy bleat.

“Rabbit!” you hear. “Rabbit we found them. Darling are you up there?!”

You shove down next to Kidra. Koz is there, hands around his mouth to shout up. As soon as you appear, he breaks out into a grin, one you can’t help but match.

“Hey,” you pant. “We’re on our way to take down the spire. Wanna help?”

“I’d love nothing more.”

You pull yourself from the hole and command Kidra to back up a bit. You make it a little bit wider, tearing up a few more boards, much to Katherine’s chagrin. But as soon as Nightlight flits up through the hole, she ignores the destruction of her home in favor of running into his arms. Bunny leaps up next, stumbling a few steps and then collapsing to his knees in relief. Tooth heads over to him, laying a hand on his arm and breaking into hysterical laughter to break the tension. And then Jack zips down the hole and returns, slowly carrying Koz. He barely sets him down and you’re already there. As soon as Jack darts off, you wind your fingers into the front of his robes and pull him down for a furious kiss.

Koz wraps his arms around you, squeezing you as close to him as you can get. His fingers start to tangle in your hair, but he gasps and moves to rubbing small circles at the nape of your neck with his thumb. You part, hovering only an inch away from him and sharing your breaths.

“I’m so glad you’re safe,” he whispers. “We tried to get here as soon as possible, but…”

He swallows. You nod your head to the window. “All that.”

“Yeah.” You pull him back in for another kiss, but it only lasts a second before he pulls back again. “We found my daughter. Seraphina. She cleared the skies, and the Man in the Moon has sent a wave of moonbeans to help fight.”

A collective sigh of relief runs through Katherine, Jack, and Tooth, as well as yourself. Because that means…

“Selene!” You look around, turning around in Koz’s arms to check to see where she went. He refuses to let you get too far away, opting to hug you close and move with you and he nuzzles into your ear.

She hasn’t returned with Nightlight and the others. You drag yourself over to the windows and peer out from behind some cover. Just a mass of darkness, hollow eyes, and the occasional, haunting rumble of the Nightmare Man. But this time, as you listen closer, you can hear a real thunderstorm echoing underneath the darkness, and moon-white glints flash in the sky in a calm vortex overhead. Wherever she is, she can’t have gone too far. You hope. You believe.

Moving back to the center of the room, you drop to the floor next to Bunny, Tooth, and Jack.

“All right.” Jack claps his hands together and sends out small bits of ice. He guides them until a crude, 3-D sculpture of their end of Ganderly forms up. “We just need to get our butts from here to here.” He points first to where they are, and then a few winding pathways over next to the spire. “Any chance you’re all at zero exhaustion? Or that mother Nature’ll feel up to covering us as we run?”

Koz sighs. “She parted the clouds as a single favor to me, and that took a lot of convincing. I have reason to believe that I shall see her again after this, but we shouldn’t count on her to back us up.”

“That’s all right,” you mutter, a little louder than you meant, as Koz takes a deep, irritated breath above you.

“Darling, I know you and my daughter have a fraught history, shall we say, but—”

“I know, Koz. I’m sorry.” You tilt your head back to face him. He squeezes your shoulder in response.

“Getting from here to there shouldn’t be too difficult between the seven of us. You haven’t heard from North or Sanderson, have you?”

They shake their heads, as do you. “Communications have been down since the attack began, same with teleportation.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “Then we’ll just assume they’re both still protecting the spire and setting up defenses around it.”

There’s a moment of utter quiet, a moment in which all of you just listen to each other breathe and shift as you sit. For a moment, you can imagine that it’s already over, that you’re already able to sit and let your mind blank out for at least the next day. And with Kozmotis here, arm around you, you can almost fall asleep feeling safe and calm.

But the rumble of the Nightmare Man, the roar of the approaching fearlings, the silent but pressurized pulse of the spire reach you all again. One by one, you stand. Tooth hops back onto Kidra, as does Bunny. Jack and Nightlight hover in the air. You and Koz settle into Kailash’s saddle, and Katherine settle herself back into the stirrups. You line up at the door. At a shared nod between all of you, Katherine takes a deep breath.

This ends in the next hour.


	102. Catalyst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyyyy thanks for 5k hits yall!

As the goose skids around another corner, Kozmotis keeps one hand on his sword, and the other on his partner. They grab each other’s wrists as they look out from the back of the saddle. For the first few corners and rushes, there was only the mere threat of impending shadows. As the goose throttles through an open area, the threat becomes known reality.

An amalgam of shadows in the shape of long claws rises up as if in slow motion, and it strikes down, caging them all into a small area. The goose rears back, tossing his partner free from the saddle. Kidra likewise shies back, whipping around so fast that the rabbit's thrown off their back as they dart forward to attack one of the claws. They both tumble onto the splintery floor below, dragging themselves out of the way of all the rest of the grabbing claws just in time.

“Turn back!” he yells at Ms. Goose. She shakes her head, tapping her heels into the side of her pet’s neck. “They’ve fallen off! Go back!”

“We have to break through the shadowsto move forward!”

The goose lets out a loud hiss and then starts waddling again. Kidra lopes next to them, Toothiana on their back. She keeps tilting her head back and forth, listening to the nearly drowned chirps of her fairies. At a particularly loud belt from one of them, she pulls back on Kidra’s mane, slowing them until she’s able to make them rear and pivot back to the others. Nightlight replaces her at their side, Jack on the other, never letting the glow of his staff dwindle too far. The amalgam claws come down around them again, splintering the floorboards in such a way to make the goose trip and sprawl everyone out. Ms. Goose quickly rights herself and flicks her head around to several different places very quickly. Kozmotis draws upon what little energy reserves he still has and keeps them surrounded by twitching threads.

“Kozmotis!” she orders, pointing up.

He follows her finger until he sets his sights on a fresh breach in the veil, one that’s been feeding the shadows with new members for at least the last hour or so. Immediately, he weaves his threads and wraps them around the entrance until the makeshift net fills and fills with squirming, yammering fearlings.

“Nightlight!”

Kozmotis braces himself against the force of the shadows as the net fills more and more. His foot slips an inch, another. Taking a deep breath, he redoubles the power heading out, trying to balance keeping them safe while also keeping some on reserve for the real battle ahead. He slips again, this time realizing he’d locked his knees at the moment he starts to buckle.

Jack’s staff hooks around his waist, stopping him from completely wiping out. He pulls Kozmotis back gently, but firmly enough that he’s able to plant his feet properly once both are back against solid ground. Kozmotis nods a thanks to Jack, who returns it and shoots a few icy blasts up around him. The frozen fearlings drop to the floor, and Jack whacks them away.

Meanwhile, Nightlight blasts through the criss-crossing shadow tendrils, dragging his daggers through as many as he dares before settling at the mouth of the open breach. He reaches back and stabs the first into the mass of fearlings. Half disappear, but so many more immediately flow out of the shadow realm to replace them. So, he stabs the next dagger directly into the portal, blasting some of his light through it for good measure.

Deafening static erupts out from the pierce point. Nightlight flickers, dropping his weapon as he covers his ears. Jack does the same, nearly whacking himself with his staff as he holds it in the crook of his elbow. Kozmotis grinds his teeth and closes his eyes, trying not to let it get to him. But he feels his tethers grow taut and flicker.

 _Come on!_ he screams silently to anyone who might be listening. He opens one eye and glares up at the sliver of moon. _Come on!_

*************

One moment, you’re grabbing on to Koz like your sanity depends on it. The next, you’re trying to roll properly along the ground to prevent soreness or dislocated body parts. You mostly succeed; there’ll be a few bruises tomorrow, maybe lasting til the next day, and that definitely didn’t help your stabbed leg. But you can stand up almost right away.

Bunny rolls up to his feet near you and helps steady you. The columns of darkness start to retreat, but if the hungry glares of the rising shadows are any indication, they’re coming right back. You grab Bunny’s paw and start running after Kailash. They haven’t slowed down at all, but Tooth at least seems to notice. Kidra rears and turns back to you, dodging around a few small tendrils lashing out at them.

“Let’s go!” Tooth says when she rolls up. She scoots up a bit. “They can hold three, right?”

“We’re about to find out!”

You haul yourself over Kira’s back. They tense for a moment, shifting to find their center of gravity. Bunny looks unsure for a moment, and then the amalgam claws come back down, ripping up the floor as they try to claps their fingers together like a perverted crane game. He manages to slip on just as Kidra bellows and takes off on their own. Ahead of you, Kailash trips, and both Koz and Katherine roll out the same way you did. Jack and Nightlight are there to stabilize them, thank goodness.

Suddenly, Katherine points up. You squint. Bunny leans over your shoulder.

“Ah, crap.”

Another breach in the veil hovers above the area, shoving fearling after fearling into the already overabundant mass. You whistle for Kidra to speed up. They can barely manage this pace you’ve set them on while carrying so much. Suddenly, a gross shriek breaks the air around you. Kidra halts in place, nearly tossing all of you off again as they thrash and bow and press their knuckles against their ears.

You whistle and nudge them a few times to try and get them going again. Not only do your efforts go unnoticed, but the sounds starts to affect you, worming its way into your head until it becomes less loud and simply becomes the background texture of the area.

_“That shall not be enough to stop us.”_

Something dark swirls around you, covering Kidra and their three passengers in a thick layer of iridescence. So thick that the noise muffles and frees you all from its grip. Your vision clears to Selene, still abstract and globule. However, her mass has more than doubled, and judging by how close and sure she sounds, the clear sky has allowed her to regain herself.

_“Tell them to shield their senses. I will let the barrier fall in a moment. Come here.”_

You freeze there. Selene’s intent is all but clear, and a forking path lays before you.

“What’d she say?” Tooth asks. You translate. She hovers off Kidra long enough to turn to face you and grab your shoulders. “Whatever you do, believe in it,” she says. “Don’t come all this way and half-ass it.”

Then she quickly lifts you up and sets you on your feet, carefully guiding herself back to Kidra. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. You draw out your bow, nocking an arrow. A portion of Selene grazes your hands, and you pull back.

“I think I… I’ve got this one Selene,” you say. The iridescence shivers. “Keep them safe for now.”

You step out from the cover, steeling yourself against the rising, glitchy static. You plant your feet, draw the bow, and summon your power. There’s a catch point at the tip of the arrowhead, the pinpoint of magical mixture. You reach out and place a bunch of your power there, letting it sit and absorb and cover nearly the whole arrow.

You aim at the wild point in the sky, tracing the arc in your mind’s eye. Taking a deep breath from your belly, you finish aiming, and fire.

*************

There’s a soft whistling through the air, only just loud enough to overcome the din. There’s one more loud blast of the static, and then it stops. Kozmotis and Jack relax their bodies and sigh in relief, looking up to see what had happened.

There’s something sticking halfway out of the breach. And it must be something either dangerous of bewildering, because all of the fearlings glance at it in unison, and just as synchronized, they struggle even harder to rip at the net.

Nightlight flies up, dragging out another dagger. Before he can get too close, however, he pauses and flits thirty feet away. The whole thing explodes into bright fireworks of gold, blue, and silver. Kozmotis drops his threads to shield his eyes. The pops and bangs go on for far longer than he expects, but eventually they end, leaving a dull roar in place of the screeching.

He peeks out from behind his arms and sees his partner standing there, arm falling back as they finish the follow-through on the shot they just took. They turn to face him, a gleam in their eye he’s seen so few times, but always drinks in when they have it: confidence.

A blot of shadow eases over to them from where it had been surrounding Kidra, Toothiana, and the rabbit. Before he can react to take it out, it rises up and forms a creature not unlike Kidra. His partner steps up to him, and the creature snakes its long neck around their shoulders, shaking out its mane.

“Meet Selene,” they say, gesturing to the creature. “She’ll be helping us beat our way to the spire.”

He watches her sway, an odd air about her form. But a strong one.

 _“I suppose it is only right to let you know. I am the Source of Change, shadow man,”_ she says.

Kozmotis glances from her to his partner, who simply nods and grabs his wrist. He’s honestly glad he doesn’t have time to unpack that statement and confirmation, as he has no idea how to begin processing it. They drag him over to the goose, where Ms. Goose and the other Guardians are recollecting themselves. Ms. Goose dusts herself off, rubs her throat, and aims yet another well-placed shout toward the weakened barrier of shadows. They part, and everyone moves through swiftly, the way cut off again as they pass into another long corridor.

At the end of this one, though, they can see a glint of violet pulse.

Each step thuds against the broken floors, rebounds from the thrashed walls, closes in from the scratched ceiling. The crowd outside thickens, what he can see of the area surrounding the crystal. The air dries and deadens, making their breathing more like the death throes of a husk. And the Nightmare Man wraps around the spire itself, claws outstretched as Kozmotis, his partner, and the Guardians exit the torn hallway.

“Kozmotis… Guardians…” it wheezes. Then it looks at Selene. “Lost… shadow…”

That’s as far as its overture gets before another arrow flies out, catching it where the two gashes of light cross over its face. It rears back, screaming and clutching at itself, writhing in a particularly delicious echo of previous times. This may not be the same Nightmare Man that impersonated him, but the glee that overtakes him as it suffers is the same as it would have been for the other.

Kozmotis looks over to his partner as they mutter, “I’ve had just about enough of these guys,” and draw another arrow.

The Nightmare Man gets a hold of itself and sends a wave of violet energy out from the spire, and it arcs from fearling to fearling until the entire estate is bathed in the uncanny light.

_K-I-L-L. T-H-E-M. A-L-L._

*************

Perhaps the pure belief flooding your consciousness made you a little _too_ confident for once.

The Guardians immediately form up and dive from the hallway entrance as the mass of glowing shadows starts moving all together. Still resting in Kailash’s saddle, you’re swept along for the ride, toppling over and only Kozmotis’ quick reflexes stopping you from rolling out again. The goose takes flight, Kidra springs up close behind, a wave of moonbeams darts down and attempts to smother the shadows, and the battle is on.

You pivot and aim again for the Nightmare Man. It’s still clinging to the spire, drawing energy from it as it wills. The slices across its face haven’t closed up, however; they still glow a blinding white, and try as the violet may, it cannot overtake the edges of the wounds. You release the arrow, but this one connects with its claws as it swats the offending weapon away. The arrow explodes into a shower of gold that sizzles as it drifts down to the shadows below it. Nightlight swoops in after that, slicing at its wrist and severing two of its fingers. It once again screams in pain, causing your body to tremble at the noise.

Kailash keeps diving, and Katherine stands up in her stirrups. As her goose circles, she lets out one more devastating shout, clearing the ground underneath. The goose touches down, and you and Koz swing from the saddle, dragging up pellets and arrows and threads. Kidra touches down nearby, and Bunny immediately leaps off their back.

Bunny tosses his weapon out in a wide circle, keeping the waves of fearlings back just a little longer. Koz’s silver swoops in right after, weaving a barrier around the wide base of spire. This close, the CRT TV-like hum is ever-present, digging into your ears so that it drowns out even your most stubborn exhaustion-induced tinnitus.

“Help me out over here!” you shout, already digging as deep as you can to find the power swelling up within yourself. More and more builds up at your fingertips, spreading up over your arms and gently wafting off of your elbows.

Koz is already there, silver streaming from himself. He feeds in to the creativity, and a sudden, resounding wave of familiarity flows through. The threads thicken until they become ropes, voices of so many drifting off of them.

Katherine is there next, opening the aurora-like halo of the mythosphere. You reach in. The whispers almost overwhelm your mind; they’re so fast now as you reach in with a magical promise of revision and new tellings. But you strip out the whispers, one by one, until you can only hear the language you know. And you search from there.

“Watch out!”

Bunny’s shout nearly dislodges you from your concentration, and then a pile of people domino-ing into each other actually does. The slim trail of the mythosphere leading back to you dwindles and nearly goes silent, but you command it back to your mind and keep searching.

It’s around here somewhere. That familiar thread, the one you’ve seen every once in awhile. One of your first… cases? Projects?

Rabbit. Cape. Sword. Dragon.

You clamp it in your power as soon as you find it, and you nearly cry from how complete it is, how whole and sound. It’s still not done, may not be done for a few more years, but the heart and soul put into the story resonates at its core. And that’s the part you pluck out, weaving it through Koz’s threads and molding the mixture thus far until everything is incorporated.

Hands grab over you and quickly, but gently direct you to the lee side of Kailash right before a wave of shadows falls over you. Flashes of silver and blue and white blink at your peripherals. The whistle of the boomerang flying through the air cuts through everything else, as does the subsequent scraping of weapons against crystal. For their efforts, the air glitches for a moment, and the hum presses deeper into your head. Still, you cling to the mixture.

“You got it?”

You look up, refocusing your eyes a little. The blobs of green and purple reform into Tooth hovering over you. She reaches around you a few times until her hand hits the magic. She flinches, drawing back like she’s been bit, but then plucks a few feathers out and deposits them into the fray. She nods and backs up, drawing out her swords and closing her eyes to listen.

“I’ve got you. Trust me.”

“I do.”

*************

As his partner builds a mixture, Kozmotis watches out on the rest of the battle. The spire looms across them—not for very much longer. Jack and Nightlight. Swoop round and round, freezing and frenzying the fearlings until the perimeter holds on its own. Then there’s a bob of pressure. A flash of light. A jagged arc out from the spire itself towards a very unaware rabbit currently smashing one fearling’s head with his weapon and shoving another shadow away with a solid kick.

Kozmotis gathers a bunch of ropes in his hand, tosses them out to the rabbit, and yanks as soon as they tighten around his middle. He has only a moment to notice that he’s being restrained before the pull knocks him off-balance and he drags across the ground a bit.

Kozmotis feels mostly sorry for the incident, but if any backlash will come of it, it’ll wait until after they exorcise Ganderly. The rabbit starts to snarl his direction, only to pause, ears flattening, as an amalgam column of fearlings sinks down into the ground six feet from his head. Kozmotis drops the threads, allowing the rabbit to get back up and pelt the retreating column with a bunch of pellets until its structure falls apart.

“I need a little bit more power!” his partner yells.

Kozmotis turns. Toothiana stands over them, turning her head every so often to keep up with the noises. She swats away a tendril of darkness that gets too curious. Slices apart another. Her fairies chirp and guide her, and Kozmotis is suddenly compelled to think of something to repay her with.

His partner calls again, “I just need one more boost of power and then I can toss this sucker at the spire!”

Jack swoops past, landing on the goose’s saddle for a moment. He scrunches his body together, ready to push off and head back in.

“Jack!” Kozmotis calls. He nearly slips off the saddle and glares at him, staff flaring up. He points. “Please help them! I’ll keep the shadows back for a moment.”

Jack nods, and flips back until he’s almost parallel to the ground. He uses that momentum to slither behind the goose next to the spirit.

Kozmotis summons a whole bunch of new threads, flicks them up, and then launches off the ground as they press back. He wraps a few around some of the crystal ledges, twining them so tight that the rock cracks. It doesn’t give when he yanks back, but he swings around to do the same to the next nearest cluster.

Nightlight circles by. The spectral spirit winds himself upside-down as he passes, taking only a second to glance at Kozmotis and smile. He then quickly tucks himself into a roll, hurling his form at the spire as well, dropping from the tuck as soon as he’s close enough to spring out and stab into the crystal. One of the daggers sinks into a particularly deep crevice and he plants himself against the spire to try and leverage it into a proper slash.

Kozmotis wraps a few threads around the handle of the dagger and pulls back as well. Between the two of them, it takes only an extra second before the knife budges, and then is sent slashing bright white, crackling streaks over the cluster. It releases a wave of energy from the break, threatening to knock them both down from the skies.

Kozmotis holds tight as long as he can, but the healing magic is starting to wear off, and his exhaustion is catching back up to him. One cord dissipates. Another. A web of threads snaps and disappears, and his foot slips. He registers the pull of gravity the instant his wildly waving arms motion around him, and he’s falling faster than he can call up more silver to stop himself—

For the second time that day, Nightlight scoops him up and gently lowers him down to the ground. Kozmotis watches one of his oldest former enemies and gives a nod. Nightlight does the same, his odd smirk still curling his lips. Whatever happened to him out in the cosmos, at least it seems to have given him a sense of humor. Kozmotis can remember when he was so insular that not even torture could derive his thoughts. Nightlight blinks, looks behind him, and then tackles Kozmotis down.

There’s a sinking sound, a deep, primordial rumble, and in the blink of an eye, darkness removes itself from them. The dark resolves into the newly amputated stump of the Nightmare Man’s arm. The same one Sanderson had severed months before. Kozmotis takes a sick glee in watching it scream so shrilly that it stops making audible noise, clutching at the arm once again.

But judging by the way the slices along its face, its other hand with severed fingers, and the stump glow with a sizzling light… These features are not healing anytime soon.

It finally gets itself under control and motions for the fearlings to have at it. The boomerang comes around once again, scattering the edges of the first wave there, and allowing Nightlight and Kozmotis to regroup with the others.

At that moment, his partner dashes from behind the goose on Kidra, carrying a glowing ball of concentrated power. They nod to him and point to themself, and then up into the spire. The goose takes off not long after, spiraling up around the spire, shout after shout blasting away the shadows that try to take a swipe at anything.

Before he knows what’s happening, Nightlight scoops Kozmotis up under his armpits and starts dragging him up around the spire as well. The rabbit isn’t far behind, nor is Jack. Up and up and up, they all rise, taking turns to displace a few more fearlings or try and aim for the Nightmare Man’s head, though the monster carefully ducks in and out of the mass of shadows.

Finally, Kozmotis hears his partner whistle one, loud, clear note. He looks up in time to see Kidra take up into the air. His partner raises their hand up, the ball of magic so concentrated, so dense that it looks like a small sphere of light that doesn’t move. At the apex of the jump, Selene comes down in her globule form, flanked by moonbeams. The moonbeams fly straight into the sphere, getting sucked in like they cannot escape the pull of its gravity. The magic grows brighter. Selene touches it, making it ignite with an incredible aura.

His partner yells as they thrust their arm downward, releasing the magic down through the tip of the spire.

*************

The first explosion goes off starting inside the spire’s core. The small magic ball had met no resistance as it bore through the crystal, carving like a hot knife through butter. A shaft of multi-color light bursts out of the side, blazing a spotlight over the dark waters. The second explosion cracks open three similar breaks. The light is more than just the first stages of a collapse, however.

A contingent of caped rabbits rise up from the lights, brandishing swords and their own magic, attacking the crystal clusters on their own. And the sense of having gathered it all together to form it in the first place breathes out of you as a contented sigh.

You can barely hear the raging fearlings anymore, partly because of the ringing in your ears and the blood pumping around you. There’s too much exhaustion coursing around for you to process and parse the different noises. Instead, you lay across Kidra’s back as they glide back down to the ground, the wind sweeping over your face in a cool, welcoming breeze.

 _“Look at that.”_ Selene swirls around you, back to her abstract form. _“It seems you have more faith than you thought.”_

“I know you added a bit of your power right at the last second,” you murmur, turning so you peek one eye at her. The cloud of iridescence twitches, and the one end looks down. “I guess I can’t exactly stop you from doing your own thing, even if I’m not eager to go out of my way to use the other Sources.”

 _“Your reluctance intrigues me, I admit.”_ You laugh at that.

“Did this turn out like you imagined all those years ago? When you saved me?”

_“I was not thinking anything then. I merely saw an opportunity and a kinship. I did what the man in the light has done many times before. I wanted to see why he does it.”_

“Is this a satisfying answer?” She’s silent for a moment.

_“So far… yes.”_

You close your eyes and try not to drift off. There’ll be time for that later, when you’re not rushing away from the collapse of an intensely powerful object, when shards of dark crystal aren’t threatening to rip open your corneas or settle under your skin as annoying splinters. Kidra bleats beneath you, and the noise runs from their throat up your arms and into your chest. It’s not quite like a cat purring, but the comforting result is the same. You run your fingers through their mane. They bleat again, a little more intensely. Above you, Selene makes a bemused, _“Oh?”_ Somewhere below, you can hear the others yelling to you. You raise your hand and wave, not looking up to see them.

The world suddenly goes completely dark. Darker than anything you have experienced except in the shadow’s lair. You bolt straight up, your spine tensing as a wave of uncanniness starts from the crown of your head and works its way down to your curling toes. The darkness abates for a moment, lifting in order for you to see the gigantic, snarling, hollow face of the Nightmare Man, half of which is seared in bright light, and the other half sizzles with the fluctuating lights of the mixture still ricocheting through the crystal.

Its claws start to close around you.

Selene dashes forward, solidifying into her bestial form. She swipes out at the creature, but it sidesteps her easily. It coils back its stump of a hand and swings.

“Selene!”

Too late. The Nightmare Man thwacks the back of her neck and she crumples, yelping as she tumbles down the spire. Spurts of dark iridescence splash off of her where the jutting crystals pierce through her on her way down. A ripple of laughter reverberates around you, like being trapped in room of floor-to-ceiling stereos with bass on full blast, an undercurrent of feedback whining in the near distance.

You clap a hand over your ear, and with the other, desperately reach for your quiver. But before you can grab anything—anything at all to fight this thing off—the claws close around you, leaving you in an endless void of black abyss.


	103. Hard Goodbyes, Soft Hellos

The Nightmare Man swoops around, fist clenched and pressed to its chest, larger than Kozmotis had ever seen it grow before. Violet sparks through it, feeding it, powering it. It devours as much of the spire’s energy as it can as the thing cracks, breaks, and starts to topple.

But Kozmotis is hardly concerned with the infrastructure at the moment.

“Let me go!” he shouts to an indifferent and hastily retreating Nightlight. “I said let me go!”

He tosses a few threads into Nightlight’s face, making the spectral Guardian cry out in surprise and drop him as he reaches for his eyes. Kozmotis wraps his threads around the nearest uncollapsed piece of crystal and launches himself upwards. Half of the threads give out due to the exhaustion he’s trying to will away, but he maintains his momentum as he ascends the fracturing tower.

The Nightmare Man swats Selene away as she tries to attack it. She yelps and bellows as she falls against the spire, sharp points of crystal digging into her. He presses himself against the falling spire as she passes, starting to ascend once again after he looks down to see if she made it. For a moment, the Kidra-esque Selene twitches on the ground, the others unsure if they want to risk the collapsing structure to see if this living Source is all right. Finally, the rabbit inches forward and reaches out with his power. It disappears against her large form, but after a second, Selene twitches, a course of greenish glitter and the suggestion of a petal pattern swirling over her. She raises her head up, opens her mouth and roars.

Satisfied, Kozmotis returns to climbing the tower. The higher he goes, the fewer threads manifest at a time. His vision tunnels for a moment, forcing him to pause and catch his breath, to rest for one moment. When he re-opens them, there’s still a haze around the edges, and a dull beating pain starts to pound at his head. But he climbs nonetheless, until there is nothing left to climb up.

When he reaches the end of the spire, the Nightmare Man is already a hundred yards up in the sky and rising. Kozmotis takes a moment on the last piece of stable spire he has under his feet, gauging the distance versus his energy levels. There’s a small, spherical burst of iridescence that breaks through the Nightmare Man’s hand for a moment.

Kozmotis summons all the rest of his energy and whips out as many threads as he can muster. They connect with and grab on to the Nightmare Man, and the force of its flight tugs and grabs Kozmotis up from the crystals.

He drags himself hand over hand up the threads, simultaneously reeling himself in. He barely makes it up to the Nightmare Man when it finally notices him. That’s when it dives into a freefall, thrashing back and forth in an attempt to shake him off. As much as it disgusts him, Kozmotis sinks against its side, lacing his fingers through the more solid shadows. The shadowy parts of the creature squirm around him, drawing him deeper into its side, deeper into the abyss, deeper into a familiar sense of purpose.

 _Even when I was starving,_ Kozmotis finds himself thinking, _they kept me going. The shadows never judged, never whined, never shut my pain down._

He pauses and shakes his head. False memories. False hope. False… “False” nothing.

“I have survived!” Pitch Black’s over-triumphant crow rings in Kozmotis’ memory. Barely eight months before, he had shouted those words so surely. Confidently. He _had_ survived, after years, decades, centuries of constant, gnawing hunger and loneliness and failure. He had survived long enough to triumph largely enough to bring the closest things he had to equal companionship back into the realm from years of slumber.

_No… Not this today…_

Kozmotis bites back the memories and digs his hands back into the Nightmare Man’s being, using what few threads he can manage to ascend to its shoulder. It’s hollow eyes swivel to face him. It brings up its hand, just out of easy reach, and makes a show of squeezing it tighter.

“Kozmotis…” it hisses. Then it cocks its head. “Missing… the darkness…?”

“Never!”

“We… see… your fear…” it rumbles. “We… know… your fear… Can ease… fear…”

“You cannot bring me hope or fulfillment! You never did!”

“All… that time… wasted?”

Images of pride blast through his mind’s eye: Finally being able to corrupt the dreamsand. The first proper nightmare horse. The death of Sanderson. Successfully breaking free of the feral nightmares. The initial idea to turn the new spirit he came across. Regaining the fearlings. Burgess.

All done under the influence of the shadows. All under the influence of the most complete power he’s ever had in his centuries of existence. All, technically, victories. He rests his eyes for a moment.

“I do miss it just a bit, don’t I?” he mumbles. His throat suddenly hurts as a lump falls into it. “So much power… so much freedom. But I shouldn’t—”

“Who… decides… morality…?” Its tone is almost gentle, almost understanding. “You… are not… evil… for living out… your nature…”

His nature. Kozmotis blinks. His nature… No, no, it wasn't what they told him it was in the first place. He looks up at the Nightmare Man again, as well as at its hovering stump about to crash down over his head as he was distracted.

“That may be _your_ nature, perhaps,” he growls, already bringing silver back up to his shaking hands. “But mine was _never_ set in stone!”

He draws up a bright shield the instant the arm is about to make contact. The vestiges of violet clash with the threads, cutting through a bunch of them. Kozmotis pushes further. Reaches further into himself than he ever has in his memory and drags up the fury and the calm, the pain and the relief, the loneliness and the friendships. All of that, he uses to fuel the last bits of magic available to him outside of exhaustion.

The Nightmare Man finally recoils, shaking out its arm. There’s a last few sliver shines around it, smoking upward as the creature shudders and throws its head back in another rising growl. A bellow answers its call. Selene’s monstrous form slowly rises above it, bringing up one of her long, sickle claws and ripping across the Nightmare Man’s chest from presumed shoulder to hip. Her jaws open wide and she clamps down into its throat, shaking it so violently that Kozmotis has to kneel and hold on to avoid being thrown into the dark waters far below.

However, it’s at that moment that its hand comes up again. Another spherical burst of his partner’s magic blasts the fist open. Its fingers unfurl and go limp, and the small dot of his partner and Kidra start falling. Only for a moment, however, as Kidra flips open their limbs and catches the breeze.

 _It’s over,_ Kozmotis dares to think. _The Nightmare Man itself is being driven backwards, locked in Selene’s jaws. It’s got to be over at last—_

The Nightmare Man’s eyes swivel back to him, however. Kozmotis glares into them one last time, drinking in its rage and betrayal and denial. They start to unfocus, but before they can go completely hollow, they swerve back to his partner. It raises its mostly intact hand. It fires off one, thin blast of shadow energy, lassoing Kidra around one of their feet.

The jolt sends his partner flying off their back, plummeting into the darkness, screaming.

*************

You’re mostly sure this isn’t a fear-induced hallucination, much as you wish it were. The waters surrounding Ganderly are a little less flat black, allowing you to see the short, choppy waves, like rippling spikes. You’ve done a few belly flops before, and they were bad enough on your body; physics isn’t your area of expertise, but you can solve the equation of terminal velocity plus surface of a liquid, even accounting for a healing factor. Even if the impact doesn’t kill you outright, there’s no way you’ll be conscious enough to out-swim the remaining fearlings, if you’re even left conscious enough to remember how to tread water in the first place.

 _What does drowning even feel like when you can’t die that easily?_ An odd thought to cross anyone’s mind in their last moments. Even odder might be the irrational giddiness of solving that particular mystery in the next few seconds.

The giddiness is too familiar, and you end up getting tossed back to that night. The night you died the first time. Pinned to a tree by invisible creatures and way too visible earthen spikes. Couldn’t move your head, body screaming in pain, son screaming in traumatic terror. Only thing that made sense was the empty moon, full of aloof curiosity and offering you a chance to impress her. Could barely hear that mysterious voice anymore—the voice of Mother Nature, the voice of Koz’s daughter, the voice of your killer.

“Stay calm,” she ordered.

No… no she said nothing like that. She brushed you off, offered little help to Jordan, disappeared before the sun rose.

“Close enough,” she mumbles.

Then something closes around your stomach, abruptly stopping your fall. Breath exits your lungs so fast that you can’t inhale for a good minute. And in that time, you find yourself rising up and away from the water, the waiting fearlings, decimation if not death.

Your savior flips you around in their arms, one hand hooking under your knees, the other supporting your shoulders. Mother Nature holds you tightly as she watches the sky beyond, sucking her teeth. Kailash streaks past just behind her, averting her attention. The goose honks and hisses loudly as Katherine pulls a sharp u-turn. Dark, heavy clouds swarm up around her, flickering with static.

“Seraphina?” you say.

Her arms twitch, hold faltering for a half-second. She collects herself, taking a deep breath and clutching you tighter. But she refuses to meet your eyes.

“Mother Nature,” you say, more firmly.

“I am,” she finally replies. Her gaze catches on something nearby, something circling. Katherine calls out your name, the sound getting close.

“You saved me.”

“You were falling.” Her voice hitches on the last word, much as she tries to cover it up with a cough.

Katherine pulls up her goose, making tight circles just beneath. Mother Nature carefully places you in the saddle, and she rises back up into the air. The clouds around her swirl and grow larger, static turning into arcs of lightning. She tosses them out over the waters, the electricity zapping into and spreading through patches of the fearlings and shadows.

“Are you all right?” Katherine’s in your face, letting Kailash carefully glide back down. She checks you over real quick and asks you again. You just reply with a nod sitting up and clutching the side of the saddle as you look around at the site.

Half of the spire has crashed down, cracking the base half so deeply that it releases both stored dark energy and the last few beams of the mixture you made. All of the lights are fading quickly, letting Nightlight’s natural brilliance stand out more and more. As does the faint orange line starting to slice the sky away from the water in the eastern distance.

The faint glowing cloud of moonbeams is thinner and smaller than you glimpsed an hour or so ago, and you suspect that as the sun continues to rise, the sliver of moon visible in the first place will lose its connection to the earth.

“Let’s get back to the others.”

Katherine hoists herself back up to the reins and tugs her goose around, carefully avoiding the flashing clouds clumping up. You glance back towards Seraphina. She pivots her face away as you look, quickly setting off a chain of lightning flashes where fearlings still linger. You watch a while longer, and in a few minutes, she looks back. Upon realizing you’re still looking, she covers herself in a fog and darts off to the other side of the estate.

You don’t consider her saving you as completely making up for that night, but it’s a start.

Once you land and manage to roll out of the saddle, the others surround you and ask too many questions as a headache really starts to take off above your ear. It only gets worse when you hear a wheezing cry above you, a bellow following close behind.

The sight of such a large Selene activates your right or flight reflex. Nothing on earth needs to be that huge or monstrous, and even though you know she’s—more or less—on your side, the idea that Selene can take away as she can give is not lost on you. And that fear is only amplified when you remember she started off as a fearling herself.

The dawn breaks over the upper atmosphere first, though, and her form diminishes in the light, fading as the dark moon grows dimmer, until she’s about the same size as she was when she appeared to you at the Pole.

Likewise, with the fading violet energy, the Nightmare Man shrinks as it falls back to the ground. Kozmotis launches off of it, grabbing onto Selene’s mane as she passes by. She bleats loudly, but only snorts and makes her way to a landing. The Nightmare Man reaches out and scrabbles on the sharp, broken spikes of the spire, but its few remaining claws only make a horrible scraping noise as they slip. It meets the ground with a desperate, hollow wheeze.

Panting, you limp over to Kozmotis as he lands. He stumbles, but Selene nudges her snout under him and lifts him back up so he can meet you halfway there. You two nearly collapse as you collide, all sense of balance and energy finally depleting. All you can do is wrap your arms around him, can’t even drag your face away from his chest to plant your mouth back against his. His forehead drops against your crown with a hum.

“Not… over…”

The both of you let out a groan and push away to see the creature struggling upright again. It points one shaking claw at you and Koz. The stump, the base of its severed fingers, and the cuts on its face still shine radiant light; dark, smoky shadows drift upwards from each injury.

“We… will… recover…” It takes a heavy, shuddering step. “I will… conquer. I… will—”

A bolt of dark energy cuts down from the sky, a horrible laugh and eyes aplenty coming with it. It splits into three prongs right before stabbing through the Nightmare Man’s back.

*************

Kozmotis freezes up as soon as the Nightmare Man does. His own scars ache for the first time in months, and he can almost feel the darkness leaking down his front again as the same happens to the Nightmare Man. His partner gasps and stiffens next to him, bringing their own hand to their chest.

“What…” The Nightmare Man can’t fathom what’s just happened. It darts its head around until its breathing becomes too much. Then it simply looks down, pauses, and gingerly touches one of its claws to the exit site.

_F-A-I-L-U-R-E_

The familiar droning of the eldritch beast surrounds the whole area. Kozmotis covers his mouth and closes his eyes, trying not to throw up from the force of it all. His partner hisses and digs their nails into his robes, pinching his skin underneath. The Guardians cover their ears and sink to the ground, shivering, and Selene thrashes and shakes her head, her form coming undone into blobs once again.

A dark pulse starts running up the bolt, draining some of the deeper shadows from the Nightmare Man itself. The poor creature grunts and twitches, and Kozmotis takes a step towards it. Once he ensures that he won’t fall, he takes another. Another. Yet one more. Finally, he is within arm’s reach.

He reaches out and takes its hand as it sinks lower and lower to the ground.

The Nightmare Man rolls its eyes toward the connection, and it tries to twitch its grasp away, but it’s too weak now. Too gray. Too faded.

The eldritch creature, apparently sated with the Nightmare Man’s lingering energy, laughs once more and unceremoniously retreats back up to the sky just as dawn truly start to uncover the world into light.

“No… pity…” the Nightmare Man says.

“I _will_ pity you,” Kozmotis replies, holding its hand in both of his. “For all you did to me, you should have known that the darkness will just cannibalize its own when their usefulness is gone.” It shakes its head as much as it can. “Oh I didn’t believe it, either.”

“Weakness…”

“There’s nothing weak about sorrow. I can’t say I’m grateful for all the years you stole from me, but…” Kozmotis blinks, at first trying to hold back the tears, but he lets the honesty out. “But you were there with me regardless. And I will do you the favor of peacefully seeing you off into death.”

It doesn’t respond. It tries, but either it can’t find the words, or it can’t find the energy to look for them in the first place. Kozmotis hates this thing, hates the rest of the shadows… except that he cannot help but also marvel at how far they brought him, even if it was into evil. The Nightmare Man doesn’t stop looking at him as its form dissipates into flecks of dust that evaporate in the light.

“Goodbye,” Kozmotis whispers. “Good riddance.”

*************

You’re not sure how long you watch Koz kneel there by himself. At some point, long after the Nightmare Man disintegrates, you fall to your knees next to him, sliding your hands into his where the claws had been. He leans on you, preventing you from rising. Which is all well and good, seeing as how you have no more energy left to get up on your own, anyway.

“Hey…” Katherine touches your shoulder. Her face is red, her eyes so tired, except for the victorious gleam in her eyes. Nevertheless, her voice is low and cracking. “I’m going to round up the remaining Raconturks and evacuate them to the Pole. Bunny and Jack are running a check and taking out the rest of the fearlings.”

“Do you need—”

“You took out the spire. You get some rest.” She points behind her. “Tooth and her fairies are nearby if you need help.”

“Okay…”

She gives you a pat on the shoulder before hopping back on Kailash and taking off. Not too long after, Selene wanders up, wrapping herself around you as well. Her form grows transparent as the sun rises higher and higher, and she hovers around your head before sighing.

 _“I must go for now,”_ Selene says. _“The moon is still dark. therefore, we will speak again soon. Perhaps I shall also speak to the man in the light.”_

“Stay safe on your trip,” you reply, throwing an arm around her as much as you can. The globules turn towards Koz, who’s finally torn his eyes away from where the Nightmare Man was.

 _“Shadow man.”_ She nods one end, and you swear she says those words as if speaking through a smirk. Then she ascends, a lightening blot against the dawn until you lose her in the glare of the sun.

“I think she was making fun of me,” Koz says. You snort.

“I’ll explain later.” There’s so much to unpack in the next few days about her, but that’s a future problem.

You linger there a little longer, running your fingers through Koz’s hair and syncing up your breathing. He finally drags his gaze away from the spot where the Nightmare Man disappeared and meets yours. No words. But you can recognize the exhaustion and joy. The nervousness and knowing that this is almost over. Almost over.

A cool breeze swoops over you, and a light fog rolls in around your knees. Kozmotis gasps and scans the sky. His daughter descends, landing ten yards away and facing away. A filmy haze surrounds her countenance, though it burns away in the sun. He grabs your hand and shoulder and hauls himself back to his feet. You cling to his hand, though you trail a bit behind him as he limps over to her.

“You’re still here.”

Seraphina turns around, locking eyes with him for a moment, then glancing to his side, to you. To your joined hands. She shakes her head a bit and looks out into the distance where her gaze catches on something else.

“I was curious,” she says. “It seems you all have triumphed yet again. Well done.”

Koz smiles and reaches out to her hand with his free one. A glimmer of silver spreads over her where they meet. She jumps a bit, but keeps her hand in his. Her eyes glisten, and she sets her jaw rigid as she tries to breathe evenly.

 _She really is just a child, isn’t she._ A child set adrift into the cosmos at too young an age after losing her parents to tragedy. Your aching heart grows cold. _So she should have known better than to do that to another child!_

But the feeling passes quickly. The young woman bows her head low and her whole body shakes. After a moment, she can’t hide the sobs anymore, and Koz closes the gap between them. His speech to the Nightmare Man runs through your mind: “I _will_ pity you.”

You _will_ pity her. If the past year has taught you anything, it’s that life is terribly unfair and unpredictable. You still want a firm talk and an apology from her, but…

You reach out your free hand and place it over Koz’s on Seraphina. She darts her eyes from it to you, finally meeting your eyes. So vulnerable, so lost. You nod, catching her side as she loses herself completely and collapses to the ground.


	104. Respite, Part 1

Just a day after Ganderly, all of you retreat back to Santoff Claussen and Big Root for some well-earned rest. And for a long-coming talk.

“I’m sorry,” Seraphina says, eyes flickering between you and Koz and the rest of the parlor. “I have not adapted to this life very well, have I?”

Sandy pats her shoulder, and she holds his hand. She’s been very selective of who gets to make physical contact with her the whole time. Sandy? Of course; he’s probably the only one she truly trusts. Koz? Hesitantly, but always. You? Truthfully, you haven’t tried since that one time.

“I haven’t seen a battle in this war in hundreds of years. Certainly never one where the shadows operated under their own volition,” she continues. “The last time I was privy to something like this, I thought to even the playing field.”

“You obscured the view of the earth from the moon,” Koz says.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I suppose it didn’t matter, as Pitch Black was beaten back that day regardless.”

“He deserved it.”

“Yes.” She looks around to the rest of the Guardians. They’re in varying levels of encouraging and stressed. “But I’ve had to ask myself recently: does Kozmotis deserve that? Does… my father deserve that?”

You dart your eyes up and meet Bunny’s gaze as his mouth opens. You glare, he stops, and you just shake your head. He rolls his eyes, but remains quiet.

“Ultimately, only you can answer that.” Manny’s bouncy voice cuts through the tension. “I cannot say I wouldn’t understand either answer, as I am still looking for my own answer to that question. But I do implore you, Seraphina Pitchiner…” He licks his lips, pausing to choose the right words. “Perhaps this is mere projection on my part, but I am of the opinion that a child should know their parent if given the chance. Especially if said parent is trying their best.”

“And you also hope I will help you in the future against the shadows,” she replies.

Manny chuckles. “I am a little transparent in my desperation, it seems.”

“But for real, can we finally discuss Burgess?” Jack drops a bit from the ceiling, sitting on his staff like a witche's broom as it hovers in a slow circle. “Like, no offense, Ms. Nature, but we could really use your help when we liberate my home, regardless of how you feel about your dad.”

“Jack!” North hisses. Jack sucks his teeth.

“I’ve waited a whole dang year for this! I’ve been exhausted since last Halloween, and I’m kinda at my tipping point! Burgess _has_ to be next!”

It’s not like he’s wrong, but the larger consensus is that everyone needs just a little bit more time. Katherine can hardly speak, you’re back to walking with a cane most of the time, and the others literally begged Sandy for some of his dreamsand once everyone was safe.

It has to wait.

Jack flies off in a huff after the “No” from everyone else, and the next few days come back with news of early frosts and ice storms across the northern hemisphere. Katherine and Tooth follow the path of his tantrum, talking him out of it and knocking some sense into him, respectively.

A largely uneventful month and a half drifts by. Not for lack of wanting to do anything, but for lack of direction. Which exists for lack of energy to do anything grandiose right after Ganderly clears out and you make sure nothing else is festering there. Not that you don’t make an effort right off the bat, but after a refreshingly boring week of doing nothing but recovery and clinging to Koz as you try to relax in the quiet of your Pole bedroom, you have another talk with another wayward woman.

“So, let me get this straight.” Kozmotis rubs his eyes for the umpteenth time that day. If he’s not careful, he’ll wear away his eyelids. “You are—were—one of the shadow forces I took with me to the moon some four hundred, five hundred years ago to assault the Man in the Moon’s base of operations and disrupt belief and the Guardians that way.”

_“Correct. However, I have very few memories of my time as a fearling. Though, I suppose it may be that I have so few individual memories as one that they were not worth remembering once I became.”_

Selene sounds so faint, but at least its just a function of the moon’s phase and her distance rather than anything potentially more sinister.

“Everything eventually comes around to connect, doesn’t it?” Koz looks around and lightly claps his hands together once. “From your killer being my daughter to one of my shadows being your resurrectionist.”

“To my arrogance being your rise,” you reply. He holds his arm around you.

“And mine to yours, oddly enough.”

*************

He’s not even allowed to help clean up the debris around Ganderly. And though a part of him realizes that’s completely fair, he can’t help but mourn that the few glimpses of the estate in ruin are the only chances he had to visit the elusive base.

“It’s just a library, Kozmotis,” Sanderson says, playing with a few dream ideas before his next round. A familiar-looking hunched creature with large ears lopes through a small dreamsand diorama. “No need to be so melodramatic.”

“You know damn well that isn’t the truth and that it’s an integral part in maintaining the flow of belief!”

Kozmotis sprawls out over the small table in the Island’s holding room. Just across the way, Rina hovers near the bars, wide eyes trained on the glittering display. A bit of the practice dream floats just within her swiping range, and she takes a jab at it. The snaking line of dreamsand has a gap in it for a moment, one which fills itself back in slowly. Rina opens her palm and hisses.

Kozmotis rushes over in an instant. Rina holds her shaking hand close to her face to watch a small pool of dreamsand settle into the center of her claws. Her dark form sizzles a bit as the shadows make contact with the golden sand. She twitches, chittering in pain, and he has to hold her still in order to brush it all out of her hand. She settles down as soon as it fades, and yet, she continues to stare at her hand long after.

“We’re almost there, Ms. Rina,” Kozmotis says. “Just hold on a little longer.”

“Ah…”

Both he and Sanderson jump and turn to the entrance. Seraphina hovers at the threshold.

“I wasn’t aware you were entertaining someone, Captain Sandy,” she says.

“Well, there’s always room for more,” he replies, jovial as ever. He draws up another chair and summons another cup.

Seraphina glances around and then enters the room. Kozmotis has been around him long enough now to recognize his cheerful, blithe attitude for the disarming trick it is, though that doesn’t ever reduce its effectiveness. He, too, slowly rises and returns to his seat at the table. It hasn’t been long since last they saw each other, but the gulf between them has shrunk only by mere inches.

“F-father,” she mumbles. She casts her eyes over toward the cage and then lets out a sigh.

“Sera,” he replies. “That’s Rina, one of my first believers as Kozmotis.”

“How did she get this way?”

“Carelessness.” He shrugs. “My own carelessness. But I have been hoping to right this wrong far faster than I’ve been able with you.”

“You’re quite fond of her, it seems.”

“I’ve been told in recent months that this is quite normal with first believers—”

“She’s not your first,” Seraphina suddenly growls. The atmosphere dampens, and Rina’s chittering picks up a bit. She blinks rapidly and then shakes her head. Kozmotis reaches out for her hand when she says, “I feel like I’ve been replaced.”

“No!” he says quickly. “Never! I—”

“Regardless of how the shadows maintained control over you by suppressing your memories, I find it… disheartening, to put it politely, that your breakthrough back into goodness was not facilitated by whatever scraps of Mother and myself still existed within you this whole time.”

It hits him like an impenetrable wall, her honesty. Her face doesn’t even change from its neutral expression. “It wasn’t my fault!” he wants to cry out, defend himself, appeal to her understanding and intelligent nature.

_But all she’s done is express her disappointment._ She isn’t attacking, isn’t pulling away, isn’t retreating yet again. She didn’t have to stay at the battle, nor did she have to save his partner in their freefall.

She’s here, and has chosen to be here.

“I wonder if that isn’t partly my own fault,” she continues. “I made a wish once. A wish on a star. Did you know that?”

He nods. “But you’re not supposed to talk about those or else they won’t come true.”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “‘I wish to be washed clean of my old life. To let go of my tide of sorrows and find my way to a new shore.’ That was my wish out there, when I was at the heart of a star. When Captain Sandy—”

She turns to gesture to the Sandman, but they both find his seat empty. They look about the room for a moment, and then Kozmotis heads to the doorway. Nothing, though if he concentrates, he thinks he can hear a low, whispery singing wandering up through the halls. He snorts.

“I think he’s left us alone for the time being.” He takes his seat again. “Keep going.”

She shakes her head. “He’s spent so long concentrating to make it come true, but I think I need to stop kidding myself.

“I interfered with your moon assault. I stalked you on the equinox and on your journey to the North Pole. I crossed paths with your…” She swallows. “Partner that night because I felt it my business to try to clean up your garbage. And from what I hear, it wasn’t even yours.”

“Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“But you were not at direct fault for that one. And yet I felt the need to stick my nose into it because I felt obligated to destroy what my father created. On some level, perhaps I just wanted to see if you would even notice me again.”

“I’m sorry I never did.”

“I’m rescinding my wish.” Kozmotis looks up at her. She closes her eyes and then turns to face the doorway, where a suspicious-looking Sanderson stands. “If my good-for-nothing father can accept his past and move on to a better future despite it, then so can I.”

“Are you certain?” he whispers. “Because you cannot take this decision back. You would have to make a whole new wish and work to make that one come true.”

Seraphina looks back at Kozmotis. He stops himself from selfishly grasping at her hand, though his hand twitches so fiercely that she notices.

“I’m sure.”

*************

You find yourself in the possession of enough free time and twitchy hands that you dive back into your lab as soon as you have enough energy to focus on anything for more than five minutes. Approximately a week and a half after Ganderly, you go hogwild and upend almost all of your remaining magical substances onto your work table at the Pole. Ombric had kindly invited you to use Big Root’s resources, but you feel less like you’re imposing yourself on others back in your own space.

First things first: experimentation.

You toss a bunch of items together, a smidge of just about everyone’s powers that you’ve encountered so far. Even Nightlight. You owe Katherine a bunch for getting the small vial of his light magic that she did, and you hesitate to use much more than a single drop of it, even to study its properties. He hasn’t stopped giving you a hard glare since she gave it to you, regardless of how many times you thank him profusely and offer to make it up to him.

But one, single drop is all you need in this mixture to determine its potency, and boy, does it make all the difference. Between the light and your new, steadfast belief in yourself, the tiny spire shard you soak in the mixture becomes as clear as air.

“No way,” you laugh. You shove your fingers into the bottle to retrieve it, and then you think better and slide on a pair of sturdy gloves before picking it up.

It’s nearly invisible, but the rougher edges distort the light enough that even if you couldn’t feel it’s solidity, you could see it well enough.

_“A fine result?”_

Selene curves her globular form over your shoulder. You’d used only her Source as the majority of the base, and with this great of a result, you’re simultaneously eager to see of the belief was the hitch all along, or if specifically the Source of Change was what you needed. Maybe a bit of both. You’ve got time.

“A damn fine result,” you reply. Carefully, you place the clear shard in your unguarded palm. It sits, mostly inert, though a faint hum reverberates from it in a clear note. “I think a few more trials, and I’ll be able to get the shadows out of Rina without risk of, y’know, disintegration.”

_“What kind of results could disintegration yield, though?”_

The fact it takes you an extra second to completely discard that line of thinking once again reminds you how different Selene is. She’s a proper cosmic being: aloof and bearing an odd, though not intentionally malicious, morality. All your friends, even the aliens, are human enough that you don’t have to step back every so often and wonder if what they’re suggesting might be a bit off the mark.

And it’s that hesitation that makes your heart swell. You should be careful, yes, but you can trust yourself not to go overboard.

“I think we can try that particular experiment out on a shadow,” you say, hoping she understand you mean one of the pure ones and not a corrupted child. “Maybe the beast in the atmosphere, if we’re lucky.”

_“I think that would be very educational.”_

Over the next few days, her form diminishes as the moon grows and grows. More moonbeams visit you, bringing messages from Manny that you think you understand and agree with, but more often than not you nod along with what they say and ask North or Tooth about it later. And when the time comes to say goodbye to Selene’s visits for another fortnight, you’re genuinely sad.

_“Bottle me up. I’ll be back.”_

As you do, one of the first things Bunny ever said to you floats back. “It’s a little creepy keeping parts of people in bottles, mate.” Not that you could fault him then for the statement, but watching a literal portion of Selene bubble in a container like a lava lamp kind of puts it into perspective. Regardless, this is all you’ll get for the next while. And you make sure to use it effectively.

A few days later, after a lot more successes than failures, you finally approach Koz and tell him about it.

“I think we stand a good shot at getting them out of her, but!” You hold out your hands to make sure he doesn’t get too excited too quickly. He grabs them and pulls you in for a deep kiss that threatens to go a lot further than you mean for this time. After, maybe. You pull your face back to speak, and he just takes that opportunity to attack your neck.

“Koz… Koz!” He settles for giving it a small kiss, but he wraps your hands around his waist and holds them there.

“You’re brilliant,” he says, bringing one hand up to cup your cheek. “I knew you’d figure it out.”

“It’s not one hundred-percent guaranteed.”

“That’s all right. Every try is one step closer.” He trails his fingers over the shell of your ear, down your jaw, and then drags you closer to him by your chin. “I have a good feeling about this one, though.”

“Is that right?”

“Mm-hm.”

You barely manage to persuade him and yourself to get back to your room before you’re ripping at his clothes. Hours later—only slightly past the time you said you’d meet up at the Island—you and Koz teleport in, ignoring the tired looks on Sandy’s, North’s, and Ombric’s faces. And you try your best to do the same with the similar one Seraphina wears. Almost on instinct, you drop Koz’s hand, clutching the mixture you brought along to you chest and veering straight to the cell.

“I guess we should get this started,” you say.

Koz comes up behind you, placing a hand on your shoulder and leaning into you. He gives you a small squeeze and then takes a step back, kneeling and holding out his hand for Rina as soon as a section of the bars open to let you both through.

*************

Rina scuttles over to Kozmotis as soon as he leans down and reaches out. She scrabbles for his hand searching over it. When she finds nothing of interest, her mouth opens to pointed teeth and he quickly swipes it away from her before she can bite.

“No!” he says sharply. Rina jolts and twitches, mumbling a chitter, but when he reaches out again to hold her shoulders, she relents and stands still.

His partner unstops the first container, the one holding the mixture materials. They tease it out with a bit of their magic, starting to combine and meld together the various bits and pieces of the Guardians’ magic. They concentrate and shape the whole thing until it condenses into a small ball of power. Then, they rest the mixture in one hand, dragging the next container up. Opening it with their teeth, they slowly tip the container until the glimmering, whispering portion of Selene hovers in the air. It sinks, but it does so slowly enough for his partner to once again take their own magic and start molding the two different parts together until it whirls faster and faster. Rina watches and starts to reach out, but she hesitates and lets her claws hover there. Kozmotis pats her shoulder and looks around.

The other side of the room is a row of curious men in rapt attention to every twitch and noise that comes from the cage. Behind them, Seraphina stands at her full height and crosses her arms. He can’t tell from this distance where exactly she’s looking, but it’s not at him. Perhaps Rina, perhaps his partner, perhaps at the magic happening in the moment.

She blinks and looks up at him, realizing he’d been spying. She crosses her arms tighter and averts her eyes.

“Koz,” his partner whispers, a small reverb accompanying their voice. It’s begun.

He once again stills Rina, watching as his partner reaches out with the thick magic around their hands. The shadows around Rina pull towards it until their hands are engulfed in them up to their elbows. That’s when the swirling colors start to spread all around Rina’s form, and when her squirming really ramps up.

“It’s all right,” he whispers. “It may hurt a bit, but we’re getting all of the shadows out of you. So you can chase as many bugs down as you wish.”

She laughs at that, a sound that nearly keels him over. A true laugh from her, after so many months doing nothing but chittering, hissing, and screeching. His breathing starts to uneven, but he drags himself back into focus.

At the same time, a memory comes back, unbidden or fought for. Seraphina, still so small, but walking, running, scrambling over every elevated surface like they were daring her to conquer them. A preview of her stubbornness to come. Goodness, children can move fast when they want to, and she was no exception. One moment, he was keeping pace with her, steering her out of the way of the most dangerous corners and the next time he glanced back, she was gone. The panic sharpened his ears, focused his vision, and kicked on his reflexes; two seconds later, he heard a thunk, a crash, and then a cry.

He found her at the bottom of the linen closet, holding her elbow under a pile of heavy blankets and a few trinkets hidden away for when she was more careful around them. Carefully, he extracted her and held her in his arms. She was on the verge of crying, but biting her lips so hard trying not to break down.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he whispered, kissing her arm. “I’ve got you.”

The small vision fades and he once again catches Seraphina’s gaze. This time, she doesn’t look away, and she holds her hand over her heart, nodding to him. He nods in reply, using the gesture to fuel his concentration on Rina. The shadows are roiling around her form, his partner is sweating with effort as the mumble to themself, and he summons a silver cord between him and her.

As soon as it connects, he can hear a series of rumbling emotions. Half of them are base instincts: Run! Hide! Survive! But beyond them, growing stronger every minute: “Kozmotis.” The same, determined whisper that freed him from the spell of enslavement barely two months ago. The same, ingrained belief she has in him.

“Kozmotis.”

“I’m here, Ms. Rina,” he replies. “Come back to us. You need to come back to us.”

His partner shudders, and the shadows almost burst out of their control. But they wrestle them back and pull. Rina spasms at the first yank, almost drifting away from him completely. They pull again, and aggressive tendrils of shadows whip out at their face.

“Oh, shove it,” they say, digging their feet into the floor. “You’re getting out of there _now!”_

One more tug—and the bare minimum resistance—and then the cocoon of shadows over Rina slides off. The momentum sends his partner tumbling back against the far wall, losing control over the shadows and yelping as the tendrils start to wrap around them. In an instant, Sanderson is there, dousing it in so much dreamsand that he accidentally catches his partner and they pass out.

Sanderson winces at what he’s done, but Kozmotis just waves him away. Frankly, they still could use a bit more recovery time.

“Kozmotis?” He looks down. In his arms are the familiar, bright eyes of Rina, finally a child once again. She beams and throws herself into his arms, and he is all too happy to welcome her back to the world of light once again.

*************

You awaken some time later, tucked under the soft sheets at the Pole. Your eyes flicker for a moment, and your last few seconds of previous consciousness play out again. And then you just roll over, reveling in the nostalgia of having to sleep and the way drowsiness used to weigh your mind down right before and right after sleeping. As you roll over, you knock into a figure sitting at the edge of the bed. They grunt, and you crack open your eyes.

Seraphina stares back at you.

Suddenly wide awake, you gather the blankets around yourself and scrunch up, wriggling as close to the headboard as you can manage in a fraction of a second.

“What do _you_ want?” The words are out of your mouth before you even process them, and with the way she winces, the reflexive tone hits her where it’s supposed to. “Where’s Koz?”

“He’s entertaining the girl.” She drags a bit of her hair over her shoulder and combs her fingers through it, not looking at you anymore. “They’re keeping her here a little while longer, just to make sure the restoration is complete. Also because, after such an ordeal, he thought an exclusive visit to Santa’s workshop at the height of production season would cheer her up.”

“And?”

A chorus of laughter—a child’s peaking above all the rest—echoes up from the heart of the workshop. Seraphina gestures and manages a smile for a moment. There’s a pause.

“Shouldn’t… shouldn’t you be there with him?” you ask. You body unfurls a bit, your muscles protesting staying in a defensive position for too long. She shrugs.

“Children are neither realm of expertise nor my job.” She turns her head toward you a bit. “Though I do admit, Rina’s optimism is… catchy.”

“Kids are real good at that. They spend two to four years being unintelligible buckets of new and exciting liquids. Then one day, they turn into the mouthpieces of godlike wisdom. And yet, still so naive at the same time.”

“I’m sorry about your son,” she blurts out. The way she says that make you break out into a cold sweat.

“What about him? What happened to my son?!” You lean forward, grabbing at her wrist to make her face you and tell you what she knows. “What happen—!”

“As far as I know, he’s fine!” Seraphina leaps up and yanks away from you. You let out a sigh of relief, slumping back against the bed. You thought for sure… with that tone… “I meant that I’m sorry I… killed you right in front of him so long ago.”

Ah. The wind sails right out from you again. But you manage to sit yourself up and nod.

“Thank you.”

“My father’s quite taken with you.”

“Am I about to get some sort of talk?”

“Hopefully, you’re about to get some sort of conversation. As am I.”

“Go on.”

“I knew some months ago—since right before the equinox—that he had changed somehow, and that the change involved another spirit. Captain Sandy doesn’t gossip maliciously, but his definition of ‘news’ is, perhaps, more lax than mine tends to be.

“So I was aware of you, even if I didn’t know that much about you. And I confess that I did not take the news quite as well as maybe Captain Sandy hoped I would. Maybe he thought it would spur me into wanting to make amends, but I swear I wanted so little to do with my father and his new… friend in that moment.

“And then he mentioned the equinox mission, and I thought it might be a good time to see how much, if at all, he truly had changed.”

“Surprise,” you say. She nods.

“Yes, it was quite the surprise. But that only tempered my anger a little. There was seemingly nothing he could do to make up for so much abandonment. And when he told me that he couldn’t remember even my name, I found the excuse to abandon him that I had been looking for all fortnight.”

You toss the covers off and stand, stretching up and down to shake out any lingering active dreamsand and to re-energize. “And how do you feel now?”

“Incomplete.” You pause, not expecting that. She continues, “I spent hundreds of years envisioning when my father would return to me, and none of the scenarios went like this.”

Jordan had said something similar when you were at his place. He’d always imagined a grand entrance, a solemn apology, a fateful reason for your absence. He got none of that in the end. And though he remained grateful you came back, you always got the feeling he’d been hoping for something like what he always hyped to himself.

“Life isn’t fair,” he’d said after admitting it to you. “But that’s what makes it life, I guess. Sure would be boring and easy if everything happened for a reason.”

“I’m sorry,” you say to her. She looks at you, brow raised. “I’m sorry that you had to endure everything you did. That wasn’t fair for you and shouldn’t’ve happened.”

“It’s all right,” she says.

“No it’s not,” you shoot back. “If it was all right, you wouldn’t be here being awkward about mistakes, would you?”

Another small, fleeting smiles teases up the corners of her mouth. “I suppose not.”

“Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m not still angry about you killing me, but at the same time, it was weirdly one of the best things to happen in my life. I’m not exactly an innocent.” 

“I’ve been told that you inadvertently facilitated my father’s revival in the mid-century.”

“And you killing me stopped me from going back to poison hundreds more.” You hold out your hand. She hunches over as she looks at it, and you take a step forward until you’re just within reach. “If this last year has taught me anything, it’s that second chances don’t happen by themselves. If you feel like you need one, then come help us. We won’t judge. Can’t judge, to be honest.”

Slowly, she reaches out and takes your hand. You close your fingers and shake, as does she, tentatively and watching you.

At that moment, the bedroom door opens, and Koz peeks in, whispering your name. He’s wearing a gentle grin. One that falters for a moment as he sees both you and Seraphina together in the room. His eyes move from each of you down to where your hands connect, and the smile returns. By his knees, a young girl, no older than nine or ten darts in, mop of curls bouncing as she moves. You release Seraphina’s hand and walk over, kneeling down to say hello to Rina, whose skin is a little grayish, despite the exorcism. And her eyes have retained a distinctive, dark ring around them.

Magic leaves a mark. You and Koz are more than aware of that yourselves.

But as soon as you introduce yourself, she gets sly smile and looks up at Koz, who pretends not to notice her as a faint blush creeps in. Seraphina also walks up behind you, and after Rina goads her a little bit, she starts making small thunderclouds in the shapes of various bugs and worms.


	105. Respite, Part 2

“I feel like every day we spend doing nothing just makes me more and more anxious.”

Kozmotis pauses in his ministrations, one hand dragging nails down his partner’s back, the other kneading their breast, his mouth carving a line of highly visible bite marks down their neck that he dares the Guardians make a fuss over. If his partner wears his marks with pride, then he’ll make as many of them as possible. But he stops, letting their newest sentence tuck into his mind a bit more before he formulates a reply.

“Jack’s right, we should have gone for Burgess right away. We’re just letting the shadows rebuild their strength and possibly planting new spires and still soaking up all the belief while we’re here doing this!”

Their tone gets wilder and their breathing quickens. In a flash, Kozmotis drags them over to the edge of the bed, hanging their legs over the side, and he kneels on the floor next to them.

“Breathe,” he says, massaging their thigh. “Don’t let the panic overwhelm your logic.”

“But—!”

“You’re not doing nothing, you’re _recovering._ We all are. Even at my peak in the Golden Age, I took leave and made my soldiers take leave to recover from the fighting.” He kisses their knee. “Your mind and ingenuity with the magical substances is what’s going to put us over on the shadows come the liberation of Burgess. But you aren’t going to have that same focus if you can barely stand without exhaustion and pain.”

They rub their forehead and sigh. Kozmotis continues to massage them, moving from one thigh to the next as they lean back and take a few, deep breaths. He summons a few tethers and creeps them around their legs and up to their hand. Through them, he can feel their anxiety rolling like waves, and he tries to project some calm back through them. After a few minutes of willing them back down and escalating his kisses from their knee to the insides of their thighs, their mood turns away from the majority of anxiety and back to the activity at hand.

“It still feel like we’re just sitting around with our thumbs up our asses when we could be doing _something.”_

“I do admit…” He leaves a quick bite to their inner thigh, earning a soft, breathy grunt from them. “I have been thinking about out next approach. Because, yes, the next point of attack should be Burgess. Unfortunately, it’s going to be the most confusing and difficult one.”

They start ticking off on their fingers. “We’ve got an underwater spire.”

“A complete infestation of shadows.”

“A lack of general belief in the immediate area.”

“And a nearby Source that’s probably guarded ridiculously well that the spire’s feeding from just downstream.”

They collapse back onto the bed. “Are we missing anything?”

“The spare spires in the lair?” He tosses it out right away, hoping he doesn’t sound too flippant.

They groan and place their hands over their face. Kozmotis sneaks up a little bit more, pressing long kisses to their inner thighs and trailing his tongue as close to the apex of their legs as he can get before veering away yet again. He manages to do this five times before his partner’s hand shoves into his hair and pushes him forward. He laughs against them, and their legs flutter around him. But he does oblige to their wishes, burying his face against them and sucking until he can feel their trembling legs press in even closer.

As he settles into the rhythm of kissing, licking, and sucking; as the quick grunts and whimpers turn into longer groans and gasps; as the hand in his hair goes from a loose shove to a tangling thrust, Kozmotis can’t help but take on some of that anxiety himself.

How _will_ they combat the eldritch beast? Selene is the most immediate answer, but her presence is limited by the moon phase, and attacking on a moonless night wouldn’t be any sort of advantage, not when the shadows revel in the darkness of all kinds. Besides, the Man In the Moon wouldn’t be able to send support himself if they go for the night of the new moon.

But choosing the full moon would lock out Selene entirely.

But a half moon would mean that neither lunar entity could operate at full strength.

 _We need to weaken the shadows’ influence first,_ he thinks to himself, taking a long suck against his partner’s clit. They cry his name out and hump themself against him. The tethers throb with anticipation, with need, with a pressure that needs only a bit more to take it over the edge. Not unlike how the southern hemisphere was at a tipping point before the equinox and Easter. The tensions rising, the new cycles bleak and confused. All those humans glued to their screens, scrolling and scrolling as the next piece of bad news pops up to wipe away most of their hope yet again.

“We need the internet,” he murmurs. His partner stills with a small moan.

“I mean… I’ve never watched porn with a partner before, but if it’ll help you help me, I’m—”

“No. I think we really need to look into using the internet as much as we can so that the shadows are even the least bit diminished. Didn’t you say Ms. Goose and Jack did something similar at Ganderly?”

They curl over him, tugging his head back away from their core to watch him. They shrug and nod.

“Yeah. Me and Tooth went one way, they went the other with the internet. I guess it helped a bit, but you can’t really control what comes across people’s feeds most of the time.”

“But there is a reason to hope and try, is there not?”

“I’m so about to burst I will literally agree to anything if it means I can get you to finish me off.”

“Darling,” he nuzzles into their leg again. “Please take this seriously.”

They close their eyes and take a huffy breath. “And in conjunction with any attempts to go viral? What’s the strategy?”

“I think we need to get you to the Source of Fall. That way, at the very least, we know what we’re working with.”

They bite their lip. “I have been running low on Source samples. And I’m never not down for seeing something new. But using them—”

“To boost belief in others,” Kozmotis assures them. “If not for us to use in battle, then for us to use as close to nature intended as possible.”

“We do still have that other spire, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

They cock their head a bit. “You don’t think that we can put it in reverse do you? The spire?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Like, if the eldritch beast got into orbit because the spire shot it up there… do you think we can bring it back down to the planet the same way?”

He sets back on his feet at the thought, mostly surprised they hadn’t tried that in the first place. But if they’ll need to fight this thing, then they need to do it on their own turf. He smiles up at them and leans in to kiss their knee again.

“I think that’s a brilliant idea worth looking into. All right, let’s call a meeting with the others and start discussing logistics—”

“Oh, no, no, _no, sir!”_ His partner locks their ankles around his head and squeezes until he can neither move nor does he wish to. They lean in, brushing their lips over the shell of his ear. “I don’t care how sexy logistics are, you’re finishing what you started here.”

His mind nearly takes off on its own to flop around in the basest emotions swelling up within him. However, he manages to keep himself down to earth long enough to whisper, “Is that a request?”

“That’s a demand.”

They hold something up in front of them, and it shines too quickly for him to process what’s going on before his manacles clamber together, and then connect his wrists to his neck once again. He looks around wildly until he settles on their beautifully frustrated glare, fist tightly closed as the last bit of light from the control stone fades. They smile.

“Although,” they say, voice lower and silky smooth. “I guess I could also call that an order.” They hook their fingers under his collar and tug him to stand on his knees. He starts panting. “How do you feel about that, your majesty?”

*************

“You really do look magnificent like this,” you croon, running your fingers through Koz’s sweat-slicked hair and pushing it off his forehead. You bring yourself down on his cock again, grinding into his lap. “I see why you’re constantly holding me down, tying me up… Blindfolding me.”

He grunts, grinding his teeth together to stop himself from talking, as you’d ordered none of that. His head swivels a bit, trapped between his biceps; his hands are tied directly above his head. He breathes heavily through his nose, and you can see his eyes flicker back and forth a bit under the blindfold. Brats get punishment, and he’d decided to head that way even though you’d cuffed him and wrapped your legs around him, ordering him to complete what he started. Too much teasing later, you’d decided, _Oh, so it’s war._

All it had taken was a little bit of goading on your part, a bit of snark to make him try to creep even more of those threads out and around you. All it had taken was a well-placed, distracting kiss and a burst of your magic to reel them under your control. And before he knew it, you had his wrists and ankles bound to the bed frame, a strip of fabric for just the occasion, and an enthusiastic, warbling “Yes!” from him to cap it all off.

Koz keeps scrunching his nose, trying to ride the blindfold up. You pause your motions and place your fingertips over the fabric, pinching the edge in your fingers and moving slightly. He whimpers and jerks up, then tenses as he tries to still all his movements. But his full-body tremble and the tiny whimpers of want let you know the anticipation has taken over his heart rate.

You firmly tug the blindfold back down so that the gap created from the bridge of his nose closes, and then you continue on your merry way bringing yourself up and down and gyrating. He lets out an actual cry at that, twisting his head again because apparently he’s just not finished trying to take over.

Not today, though.

You still your self a bit again, slowly grinding back and forth as you lean down and plant a soft kiss to his lips. He sighs into it, opening up as you press your tongue against his bottom lips and eagerly sucking it down once you’re inside. He moans, and you swallow it as you lift your head back. He tries to follow but you reach up and gently tug his hair to keep him down. But you let your lips brush against his as you speak.

“Like I said, I think I get why you like doing this. It’s a pleasure seeing you writhing and struggling, trying to act out when you’ve clearly lost.” You stifle a giggle at your own words. Cheesy? Cliche? Vague? Sure. But at the desperate panting Koz replies with, the doubt tamps down again and you redouble your efforts. “Fallen kings make good servants, don’t you think?”

You bite hard into Koz’s throat, earning yourself a deep, reverberating groan from him. He tenses for a moment, and then submits under your teeth, throwing his head back into the pillows and whimpering as he struggles to free his hands and hold you.

As you lick over the instantly bruising bite mark, he spasms and breaks, calling your name before cutting himself off with a choked grunt. You repeat the action, creating a mark right in the middle of his scar, right where the contrast will best show up compared to the rest of his skin. Then, you carefully cup his chin and bring it to face you.

“Yes, your majesty?” you whisper. Then, laying it on thick, “If you have _any_ feedback on this, please let me know. Or any ideas, or wants, or anything.”

He starts to pucker, expecting a kiss, but you just trail your fingers down, folding your hands and laying on his chest as you keep the bare minimum friction going. You drag one finger over the dip at his collarbone, making him shiver, but he otherwise says nothing.

_Well, that won’t do._

“Your majesty,” you say again. He nods, only letting out his heavy breathing. You grip his chin this time and rub your thumb along his lips. “Respond.”

“Y-yes?” he finally replies huskily.

“Yes what?” You circle his lips fully, dipping into his mouth for a moment and then swiping what little spit you’d gathered around them again.

“I… I don’t even know what to call you. You, whom I’m bound to serve and service.”

You pause. This took a swerve you’re not anticipating, but honestly, it wouldn’t be the first time you took up a whole role during a role play scenario. And, technically, you started it, didn’t you? You sit back, grinding in slow circles and running your nails up and down his chest. Hopefully, not too much time is passing as you think on it, because as soon as he asked for a name, your mind blanked. You drag one of your hands up to your forehead and rub as you try to conjure some sort of name. Any name would do, right? But as soon as you concentrate, something pulls at your hand and you summon a bit of magic.

_Oh yeah… Maybe my own creativity can help._

With that thought, you encourage the magic and let the sensation flow through your mind, unsure if it’s just what you’re expecting to feel or what you’re actually feeling. And then there’s a name, right on the tip of your tongue. A whisper starts up in the back of your mind, sounding familiar. It gets louder, more exact the more you concentrate until…

“Cheirok,” you say.

It rolls off the tongue oddly, but not at all oddly at the same time. Once you say it out loud, it’s no longer a strange string of syllables and sounds. It’s not your given name, sure, but a part of you thinks it may as well be with how easily your mind shifts to accommodate its presence.

“Cheirok,” Koz repeats. His forehead furrows a bit, and a smile starts at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve never met anyone with that name.” He drops his voice low and slowly arches against you, rubbing in such a way that you lose your composure in your distraction and your breath hitches. He chuckles and starts to do it again, but you plant your hands on either side of his head. He startles at the sudden movement and sound, and he still again.

“Well, now you have,” you reply, sliding one hand back to his hair. He yields again and follows your pull until you can get back at his exposed neck, licking a thin line down to his chest and dipping farther down until Koz can barely contain himself and you start keeping a wary eye on his bonds.

“Cheirok!” he moans as you nip at his belly. “P-please, allow me—allow me to pleasure you first.”

“Oh?” You give another bit, a bit lower, closer to where his flushed, hard cock lays against his abs. “You want me to allow you…?”

“It is why I’m here! It’s why I have—” He licks his lips and swallows and coughs. “—why I have been brought to you in the first place.”

You crawl up until you hover face to face again. He arches again, but you lift yourself up so he can’t feel anything but the cool air, much as he tries. Licking his lips, you pull back yet again as he tries to capture your tongue. He stretches until he cannot anymore, and then falls back to the bed, panting. You take the opportunity to grab his chin and insert your finger in his mouth, running it in circles over his tongue.

“Use this, then,” you whisper. “And shut up until you’re done.”

Letting his bonds fall away, you position yourself kneeling above his face. Once he realizes he’s free, his hands instantly search out your thighs and he gets a bruising grip on them. Holding on to the headboard, you slowly lower yourself down, twitching as his eager tongue comes into contact with your folds and clit.

*************

With his main sense blocked, Kozmotis can only rely on the sensations coming into contact with him at the moment. Their tender hips in his hands, skin giving under his grip. The soft wetness coming down over him again and again. The ache in his own, neglected groin. All of it so amplified now that he has only the touch and sound and smell surrounding him.

Luckily, he knows his body so well that he easily falls into a rhythm. They moan above him, spasms running up and down their legs as they hump faster, grind longer. His cock pulses so hard at a sound they make he thinks he might just come just from that.

“Kozmotis!” they cry, dragging out the final sound until their hiss transforms into a moan. “Just a little more!”

He happily obliges, daring to pull on their next downswing and keep them in place long enough to lightly drag his teeth over their sensitive core and rapidly alternate between firm licks and firmer circles with his thumb. They tense, closing their knees around his head.

“Almost, almost, almost!” they keen. Their hand reaches down, tangling into his hair and forcing him close yet again. With a few more laves of his tongue, they let out a glorious cry of his name and keep him almost immobile as they grind themself through the rest of their orgasm. His cock twitches in response, and he remembers their order. But “Shut up until you’re done” has technically been fulfilled.

“Thank you,” he says, turning his head as much as he can and laying a kiss to their thigh. “Feeling you come was an honor.”

“I’m sure it was. But don’t say goodbye too fast.” Their voice floats in and out, wobbling between breathy release and shying domination. “I’m not quite done with you.”

The next thing he knows, his partner’s tapping and tugging him to roll over. Kozmotis, still blindfolded, holds himself above their body on his elbows.

“I’m sure you know how this position works?” They hook a finger under his collar and slowly drag him forward until his cock brushes against them, jumping at the hot slick coming into contact with his cooling member.

“Oh, I do. Oh I do…”

They’re silent. His arms shake the longer his holds himself up, but after no further words, he carefully kneels and runs his hands out over them. He finds their center again, gently brushing his fingers through their folds and taking himself in his other hand. He shuffles closer, blindly moving to connect the two.

“Oh, your majesty?”

He freezes, heart pumping, hoping he hadn’t zoned out as they were previously speaking and missed a key instruction. His cock throbs in his grasp, but he wills himself not to squeeze or pump, despite how badly the need wells up in him.

“Y-yes?” he replies.

“I think you’ve forgotten one important step in this process. Shame, as you were being so polite before.”

He smiles, gritting his teeth as their smooth voice hits him. He squeezes himself, just a little, just to temper the feelings right now.

“Of course,” he whispers. “How foolish of me. My apologies.” They trail a touch up his arm—their foot, he determines as they flex their toes into his skin for a moment. He takes a few deep breaths. “May I please…” _Oh, what the hell are the right words?!_ “May I please have the-the pleasure—”

They move their foot over the hand holding his cock, and subsequently roll it over the head for a moment. He nearly doubles over from the contact.

“Mm… Don’t blow your load before you even finish asking for what you want.”

 _Fifteen years married._ The thought wanders across his mind out of order yet intact. _Thank you, Arden, for letting them explore enough that they can do this maddening bullshit._

“—May I have the pleasure of entering you?” he finally finishes.

One of their hands reaches forward and rests over his, gently tugging him forward again until the head rested against their entrance.

“You may.”

That’s all the permission he needs before effortlessly slipping in and effortfully keeping himself together after all that teasing and foreplay. The first thrust lights his nerves on fire, and he gives a second one before it can fizzle out. On and on and on, faster and faster, but not going too fast in order to make it last. And for a time, the only sounds in the bedroom are their mingling moans and the slapping of his snapping hips to theirs.

Every back and forth, every stroke, every thrust, jolts of intense pleasure running up from where their bodies connect. The pressure in his middle builds and builds yet again, but he wills it back down just to keep feeling them around him. They’ve gone through too much lately, will go through too much more.

And again, the image of the decrepit tree house in the middle of the woods comes to him. His partner, tramping back from a day’s hike, mud coating their boots. Him, teleporting back after his duties as an imaginary friend are done for the time, or even after a sparring session.

Boring, plain, unexciting domesticity. With them.

His thrusts become erratic, and he knows holding back is a losing battle. But he’s so unprepared for when his partner quickly takes the edge of the blindfold in their fingers, rips it off, and wraps their arm around his neck so that the first thing he sees is their eyes. So sudden, so startling that his body seizes up then and there, his orgasm bursting out all at once.

“I love you,” he whispers nigh-soundlessly as any remaining energy abandons him and he collapses on top of them as gently and slowly as his boneless limbs allow.


	106. Kids These Days

Jack and Katherine had been moderately able to leverage the power of the internet into belief’s favor during the assault on Ganderly. Before that, Jack had spent a bit of time trying to drum up an online presence (mostly to go viral, but alas, the cards were not in his favor), and his variety of personas on social medias and the odd forum haven’t gone completely unnoticed. However, you may as well be reading a foreign language for all you can decipher about the internet Jack shows you on his phone.

“What do you mean you don’t know how it works?” Jack says when you finally sit down with him to go over the next few steps. “Didn’t you grow up with it?”

“I’m a mid-generation Millennial,” you reply, shrugging. “My first internet provider was Juno dial-up. I saw web 2.0 evolve from a decentralized dot com bubble to little social media fiefdoms. I’m not completely ignorant, but I’m also not a digital native, and I really have no idea how much the landscape has changed since I was alive _seventy-five years ago._ I didn't exactly care enough to keep up." You hand him the phone back, eyes reeling after looking at whatever the hell gimmicky social media site he’d shown you. You think for a moment, and then smile. “You know who does know all that, though? Jordan. He or Alisah can probably help us.”

They’re both excited to have you back in town for a little bit, and Alisah especially is eager to make friends with another Guardian. Though, she’s a little fast for him to keep up with, since it may as well still be summer this far south, despite it being November. Still, with a bit of rest and a lot of determination, Jack manages to create a thick enough layer of ice over the pool’s surface for Alisah. She hesitantly holds his hand for the first go-round, though, trying not to wobble to much in her soccer cleats.

“You don’t have ice skates?” he asks incredulously. She giggles.

“No, you have to return them at the ice rink before you leave. Like bowling!”

“Weird.”

Meanwhile, you and Jordan head inside to talk shop.

“She’ll be okay, right?” he asks, watching through the blinds.

“Trust me, he has a vested interest in not seeing kids drown.” You slap the phone on the table and tap to one of the different apps. “Okay, so we’re trying to drum up some sort of support online. Y’know get the kids involved so that we can…” You don’t like the way this next part sounds, but you don’t exactly have a better way of phrasing it. “So we can kind of harvest their belief and use it to power our magic as we take down the eldritch thing and save the world.”

“Odd way of saying that, but okay.” He taps and swipes and scrolls his way through the app, mumbling about Jack’s follower count and content. He repeats it for a few others before sighing. “So, this is… not great if you’re looking for influencer power quickly. The only one that probably has a chance at reaching a large-ish audience of kids is this one.”

He shows you a gaudy profile with Jack Frost’s name on it. A stream of posts continuously appear in the feed, likes and reposts and replies updating in real time. Most of the posts are written with an array of letters, symbols, and punctuation, and the effect punches you right back to early 2000s leet speak. Jordan swipes to a different page, revealing the posts that Jack has made. It’s all largely distorted photos and odd phrases that you can only guess are the hip new memes.

“It seems he’s a big name fan in this one fandom,” Jordan says. “It’s not a huge fandom by any stretch, but it’s for a decent kids’ show.” He scrolls a bit more, and then laughs. “Yeah, not surprised Jack found his footing here. The series is already holiday-character-adjacent, there seems to be a big RP community, and his insistence on ‘staying in character’ is both laughable and endearing to them. Not to mention the ones who are… channeling, I think they call it? Kinning? That might be something different. I don’t really understand it, but it’s mostly harmless, I think.”

“I mean, big fandom or not, we’ll take an extra few thousand humans’ belief, given the circumstances.”

“In that case, let’s let them finish up out there, and me and Alisah’ll do our best to help you organize a raid.”

Alisah gets really into helping plan the raid. Turns out she has a profile on the same site, though she tends to move in different circles. She goes off on a long, long lecture-rant about how the site works, what the last few popular things have been, and why she hates a few of them. Jack sits there nodding and chewing ice cubes, and you furiously take as many notes as you can. But, she’s participated in a few before, and with her advice and a promise to tell all her friends and school acquaintances, you have the groundwork set for a fandom-wide event.

A little while later, after Alisah’s parents pick her up, Jordan flips over to another one of the sites. This one’s more teen/adult oriented, and he gives a few pointers on how they might be able to do a similar thing with the same fandom’s presence on this one.

“Granted, you have to be more self-aware, yet completely irony-poisoned to appeal to teens and young adults these days,” he says. “Especially since the last year has been kind of, well, a drag. Don’t know how else to put it, but kids all over have ennui like nobody’s business. I think it might be the…” He points up to the sky. “That thing’s fault, but these things also go in cycles. Still, if you can manage to grab the teens back from numb depression, that’d be fantastic.”

“We’ll do our best.” Jack gives a small salute, catches his breath, and then turns to look down the hallway. “Can I use your shower real quick?”

“Just don’t freeze my pipes.”

Jack heads back to the bathroom, walking from exhaustion rather than having the wind carry him. Jordan watches him go, and as soon as the water starts running, he turns to you.

“How’ve you been?” He looks you over. “Obviously not staying out of trouble.”

“Not yet, no. Hopefully soon, then I can move back into my tree house in the forest.”

“I stopped by there the other day.” He takes a sip of his drink. “I’m amazed it hasn’t crumbled by now.”

You shrug. “Magic, I guess.”

He nods, and then leans back in his chair, face turning solemn. “I don’t exactly want to have this conversation with you, but you and I need to talk about the future.”

“What… What about it?” You know exactly what about it, but you’d rather not think it.

“I have a good ten, fifteen years left—”

“Stop,” you whisper. “Don’t even. Just. Don’t.”

“Again, I’m willing to wait til you have this whole shadow thing under control, but we _will_ have to talk about it sooner than later.”

You shake your head, eyes going blurry as tears well up. Jordan calls your name. You keep staring at your clenched fists on the table. He calls again.

“Please look at me.”

Carefully soaking up the moisture with your sleeve, you force your head up to face him. He looks so sad, despite the corner of his mouth tilting up.

“I don’t like it any more than you do. But this is the reality you’ll have to face in the next decade or two.”

_Decade or…?_ You quickly do the math. Anywhere from ninety-five to one hundred and five. “That long?”

Jordan snorts. “Yeah. It’s amazing how life expectancy jumps when people don’t have to worry about going bankrupt over preventative or emergency medical care.” He holds your hand. “Alisah doesn’t know what private insurance is, and I’ll fight to the end to make sure it stays that way.”

“And that ends is kinda coming soon.”

He squeezes your hand. “I know it’s not going to be easy when it happens. I’ve made my peace with that inevitable day. But you haven’t, and I just want to get on the same page about it before it’s too late.

“You’ve made a lot of progress from where you were a year ago, moreover from seventy-five years ago. I don’t want something out of either of our controls to wipe it all away.” He nods a little. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t wipe it totally, since now you have so many people you can lean on. Good for you. Keep it up.”

You sniff and wipe away the next wave of tears. “You’re not wrong about needing to talk it over. But thanks for letting it slide for the next… hopefully only a few more months at most.”

Jordan hauls himself up and scoots around the table. You rise from your seat and throw your arms around him, squeezing your son so tight you might not ever let him go. Frankly, a part of you knows you won’t ever be able to.

*************

“Does _anyone_ know exactly where the entrance to the Source of Fall is?!” Kozmotis shoves the pile of books over and rubs his head. It’s been hours, and neither he nor Ms. Goose nor his partner have come up with anything. Ms. Goose lets out a small growl, but his partner mumbles something to her and she says no more.

“Babe, that’s like your third book,” his partner says to him. Kozmotis looks up. They have half a dozen tomes open around them, overlapping with Ms. Goose’s pile of equal volume. He feels himself flush a bit.

“Research isn’t my thing,” he mutters. “It takes too long.”

“Then, perhaps it’s best to leave such work to the academics, father.” Seraphina hovers in the doorway of Big Root’s library, holding another stack of books. She carefully sets them down on a mostly clear end table. “Ombric found these in a stray pocket dimension and said you might find them useful.”

His partner leaps over to the books, taking a moment to catch their breath from too much movement too soon. They pick it up, nodding at the title. They tuck it under their arm and lightly toss the next two to Ms. Goose, who’s seemingly taken up the duties of researching through all of the non-English books. And then they just as easily fall back into study. But Kozmotis brushes himself off and hands off his pitiful stack of books to the others.

“Maybe I should work on a more practical end of the search,” he says. “After all, we know the general location of the Source—somewhere near Burgess. Being able to teleport right there during the battle could be a huge boon.”

Ms. Goose ponders. “It’s not a terrible suggestion, but the amount of resistance you’ll meet is bound to be—”

“Hardly an issue against my power,” Seraphina interrupts. She rises up a bit more over the room, holding her shoulders back and raising her chin. He looks around. His partner looks wary, but Ms. Goose rubs her chin.

“Maybe we can just take over the Source and have it on hand for the big day,” she says. “At the very least, it’d be good to keep out of the shadows’ control.”

“But we don’t know exactly where it is,” his partner reminds them. They tap their books. “‘Near Burgess’ can mean within the city limits to five hundred miles away.”

“Do you forget how much ground I can cover at once?” Seraphina creates a small cyclone in the room. It sucks a few of the books off the shelves.

“All right!” his partner yells. They close their eyes and take a deep breath. “Seraphina, I know. You can bolt around the world in like a minute. But if you’re determined to help—and I thank you for that, that’s really cool—can y’all wait one or two days?”

“Darling, just last week you were talking about how you hated how slow we were going on the Burgess front.”

The hold up their hands and sigh. “I know, I know. But Selene should be able to trickle back in the next few days. I have reason to believe she _might_ be able to help track it down, since she’s a Source herself.”

They explain how, under the influence of the three Sources in the lair several months ago, their mind had been drawn towards escaping to another Source. Which in turn explains why they had ended up so quickly in Antarctica.

So, they wait. In the meantime, Ms. Goose and his partner uncover a few more things that should help narrow the search down should Selene not have pinpoint accuracy. Also in the meantime, Kozmotis takes time to stroll around Santoff Claussen with Rina and Seraphina. Both girls are quite taken with the town, and the town has become quite intrigued with them, though for very different reasons.

“I was almost taken over by shadows!” Rina proudly explains when one of the local children asks her about her washed-out skin and eyes. The parent accompanying them immediately darts their eyes up to Kozmotis, though they have the decency to chide their child about asking such personal questions. The other child looks more confused than anything at the tension between the adults.

“Okay…” they say. Then they shrug. “Wanna go play tag?”

“Yeah!”

Kozmotis wonders if it’s even occurred to Rina how odd it should be that a village halfway around the world speaks her language, but as they scamper off, he decides that if she’s ever curious, she’ll ask. She’s full of questions. The other adult clears their throat and holds up a hand, but before they can accuse him of anything, Ombric slides in.

“Misha, isn’t it wonderful that a child can be so carefree despite hardships?” The parent lets their lips slide into a thin line.

“It is, indeed, Ombric Shalazar.” They say slowly. “And given those circumstances, have you considered where this girl should finish growing up?”

“We plan on taking her back to her home soon enough,” Kozmotis says. “We’re just making sure there isn’t any lasting damage to—”

“Of course there is!” They point at her. “Even if her parents cannot see how different she is for lack of belief, they’ll notice how changed she is eventually.”

In the distance, Rina becomes “It,” and she glides easily over the snowy road. In her wake is a slight, but very present glimmer, like a mirage wavering up in the desert. There are similar wakes emanating from a few other children. Though Rina’s is just slightly off.

“That _is_ quite a magical aura, I will say,” Ombric says.

The parent crosses their arms and huffs. “Even the most steadfastly in-denial human will notice how much power she’s radiating at some point. The trouble comes if they decide to continue their denial at all costs and stifle her.” They meet Kozmotis’ eyes. “Perhaps even resorting to dangerous methods to tamp it down in the name of ‘normality.’

“So what will you do then, former Boogeyman? If you truly care about children’s well-being now, how will you ensure that Rina can fully express herself—including her newfound magical potential?”


	107. Falling Into Place

Kozmotis paces in Big Root’s parlor. Selene should be back in a few hours, and that’s when they’ll finally be able to put the next few steps of their plans into motion.

“Sit down, please!” Ombric begs him, moving a chair behind him until it bumps the back of his knees. Whether he cares to or not, Kozmotis sits facing the old, irritated wizard tapping his fingernails on the armrest. “Gods, Kozmotis, I’ve never seen you this nervous. What’s wrong?”

“Rina,” he replies. “Well, more that one person talking about her than the girl herself.”

“Misha.” Ombric twirls his finger through his beard. “They’re from one of the older families here. They’ve had a lot of stories about the Guardians and the boogeyman passed down to them.”

“Oh, I don’t care about them! By now, I’m used to my _allies_ hating me.” Kozmotis waves his hand dismissively. “No I’m… It’s just that they’re right, aren’t they? Rina might be in danger if we just dump her back on Thera without any means of support.”

“She’ll probably spark a bit of press, what with being missing for months after going viral with your story.”

He hasn’t even considered that snag. Oh, goodness, there’s so much to consider. “Which means that even if her mother doesn’t tamp down on her obvious magical ability, there’s a higher chance that other, less invested people will.”

There’s a pause.

“Perhaps she should live here,” they say at the same time. Ombric smiles.

“Ah. Good to see we’re on the same page about this, then.”

“If only it were so simple, however.”

“If what were so simple?” Seraphina appears, a rush of wind depositing her through the doorway. She combs her loose hair with her fingers to tame it and walks into the parlor. “Ombric. Father.”

“Mother Nature.”

“Hello Sera.” Kozmotis considers his options, then something crosses his mind. “Seraphina… When you were separated from me and your mother after the attack that night, where did you end up?”

She blinks and tugs a lock of her hair over her shoulder, twisting it and running her fingers through it again.

“The cosmic seas drifted me over to an ancient, living constellation: Typhon. He took pity on me and let me stay in his care. He taught me my magic and kept me company for nearly ten years.” She catches his gaze. “All the while, I waited for you to find me.”

Her steely glare deadens the spark in her eyes, and she takes one step back. Kozmotis hadn’t meant anything by bringing up the memories, and he had been hoping to get further details soon enough. He hadn’t thought she’d go so in-depth. It is reassuring, he admits to himself, that she was not simply adrift and alone until she grew up.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you were—”

“I know.” She flips her hair back. “A part of me feels so foolish for thinking the shadows wouldn’t have tried something like that. Meanwhile, as I stayed hidden from everything else, you were exacting vengeance.”

“I asked you this,” Kozmotis tries to pivot the conversation, as this is something he doesn’t want to discuss fully in Ombric’s midst, “because I wanted to know what you would have wanted me to do to help you. After all, if I had suddenly reappeared to gather you back and we had been able to live in a Golden Age where Xiorena was the last casualty of the shadows, we would still have been changed by it all.”

“This is about Rina,” she says.

“But it is also about you. I cannot change the past; I wish I could go back to the grief-stricken Pitchiner and tell him that his daughter still lived, but these are the consequences for all my mistakes.

“But I just want to ask you, albeit in hindsight: if I had thought to search for you, and had found you with new magical potential in a different person’s care, how would you have wanted to handle such upheaval?”

“I…” Ombric surreptitiously moves another chair until it bumps against Seraphina’s knees. She startles at the contact, and raises her foot to kick it away, but instead she lowers herself into it, wringing her hands in her lap. “I think I would have wanted to remain close to Typhon, even if I did not live with him anymore. It would be the least I could do after he gave me shelter and tutelage.

“But I still needed my father, I think. I needed my family.” Her voice catches for a moment and she turns to Ombric. “In your journeys across the stars, did you happen across an old, living constellation? A blind one, at that?”

His eyes soften a bit as he thinks, but he shakes his head. “Nightlight guided me through many Golden Age ruins, as well as around to where life still exists, despite the setbacks. But we did not see a living constellation.”

“Okay… Perhaps one day I’ll take some time to sail the cosmic seas once again and look for him. Our parting moments were not exactly warm ones, and I owe him mountains of apologies.”

Kozmotis reaches out and lays his hand across hers. She goes stiff for a second, and then holds it. He doesn’t ask any questions, doesn’t move to make judgment. They just sit in silence until Seraphina is ready to speak again.

“I think Rina is too far gone to return to her normal life. The townsfolk are worried that adults in her life will try to suppress her potential, but I think even with the most open support, she will not thrive if trapped on the mortal side of the veil. She’s seen too much and knows too much. Her believer’s eyes will never close.

“But she does still need her family. And I have reason to believe that her family would be overjoyed to know that she is, in fact, all right.”

Kozmotis nods in agreement. After seeing the anguish that her mother has gone through each time he’s visited Dimitris and Leni, he’s sure that having her daughter back would keep her from falling into the same pit of hubris as he had. The stakes are hardly the same—Rina’s mother does not have the fate of a society on her shoulders—but the grief is identical.

“We should return her to Thera,” Kozmotis says. “But we must ask Rina’s mother if she would be willing to move to Santoff Claussen. Or if she would be willing to let Rina study here for a few months of the year.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to take her back,” Ombric says. “I know of a sympathetic citizen here who can persuade the adults and non-believers to see through the veil again. It may take a few tries, but a bit of real magic in front of them is usually undeniable enough.”

“Thank you.”

Ombric sweeps out of Big Root, gliding across the snowy streets until he disappears behind some of the buildings Kozmotis returns his attention to his daughter, opening his mouth to say something before she cuts him off.

“I yelled at him before we parted,” she says. “Typhon. I had become so angry when a passing ship revealed how pleasant and happy the Golden Age had become. How content they were after Kozmotis Pitchiner had rounded up the last of the shadows and stuffed them in a prison. I was so enraged that you had not been looking for me like I’d imagined all those years.” She closes her eyes and drags her hand free of his, crossing her arms over herself. With a whisper, she says, “I destroyed the ship.”

The sentence hangs in the air, stunning Kozmotis so that he can barely bring himself to take a breath, let alone try to form a reply. What can he say to that?

“I destroyed the ship, and when Typhon noticed, he told me how disappointed he was. He took me under his care for a decade, saw me grow up, taught me magic, and I… I screamed ‘You’re not my real father!’ at him. It’s no wonder he sealed me away and made me the heart of a wishing star. Who would even want such an ungrateful—”

“Not another word.” Kozmotis is grateful to this Typhon, he is. But how dare this ancient being see a scared, angry, lost child act out—violent as she was—and toss her away. “I cannot condone the destruction, but you were a _child._ A child who had already seen too much and needed as much space and guidance to cope with the trauma. I can hardly hope to be even a substitute father at this point, but I will not judge you for this.”

Seraphina is crying at this point, but she manages to look back at him, sniffing. She takes his hand again. Squeezing it, she ekes out a small, “Thank you.”

They remain like that until his partner, Ms. Goose, Nightlight, and Rina return from their day about the town. The other Guardians show up one by one: Jack, Sanderson, Toothiana, and even North and the rabbit manage some time in between Christmas logistics. Ombric returns as Big Root swells with befuddling scents of different dishes, overlapping conversations, and a warm atmosphere. He widens the parlor and conjures a large, round dining table, already set. Kozmotis doesn’t remember the Guardians making plans for this, but he refuses to break up the party.

The pass bread, interrupt each other, get testy and drunk. And finally, as the town outside goes to bed without so much as a “Good night,” the shadowy, iridescent, bestial form of Selene hovers outside a window. Kozmotis’ partner rushes up to let her inside, and the rabbit motions for Rina to follow him to another room of the house to keep her occupied. Ombric clears the table and places a scrying spell in the center. It takes far more of his concentration to move past both the eldritch creature and the half moon, but the visage of the Man In the Moon flickers above them, and they begin reporting in.

*************

Selene shivers as she swirls in her abstract form around you. She grazes past your arms and neck, transferring some of that energy through you until you’re vibrating at nearly the same frequency. She keeps muttering to herself, and as you catch some of her when she passes, you can hear more clearly.

_“Can sense Fall… It is winter near Fall… Near the corrupted streets of the ice sprite’s home. But far away on a closer scale. Half a day for a human. Less than an hour for a spirit.”_

“What direction, Selene?” you whisper, trying not to knock her focus away. “North of Burgess? South?” A thought strikes you. “Please don’t let it be in the ocean…”

 _“Where else is it but a forest?”_ she quickly replies. Then she shudders. _“North of Burgess, but much farther West.”_

Koz rolls out about five different maps, and Manny summons a few moonbeams into view of the scry. Jack floats next to you and Selene.

“'Kay, so is it like a huge forest by itself? Is it near a town of some sort?”

Selene shivers and jerks in a zig-zag motion. _“Stacked rock wall. An arch. A small stream.”_ She makes a sound like a cough. _“Trying to see much further than the Source itself is difficult. I am called to it, but am not allowed much further unless I go there myself.”_

“Can you transport me?” Jack reaches out a finger, hesitantly poking Selene. She breaks into many globules and then reforms her bestial form.

_“I can try. But your magic is not from my Source. You will suffer consequences.”_

At the translation, Jack takes a small breath. He sets down on the floor and twirls his staff a few times.

“I think it’d be worth it,” he says quietly.

“Jack, you are already weak from Burgess takeover!” North swings his arm out, as if to wipe away the possibility before anyone thinks more about it. “Playing with Sources will make you sick. Possibly injured. You should save strength for battle!”

This is my home.” He turns in a circle to face all of you. “The only place I know to call home, even before I became this—”

“Jack, come on, I’ll go,” you say. He makes an indignant noise and blue curls up the staff’s twisted bark. “No, no! It makes perfect sense! I’m resistant to her Source, so I’ll only be out for a bit before bouncing back. She can transport me there, I can set a teleportation globe, and then I’ll be right back.”

“Darling… There will be shadows waiting.” Koz wraps his arms around you, tightening his hold and not letting you move too much. But you firmly remove his arms and twirl free.

“Of course there will be.”

“So take backup!”

“You and me!” Jack flies up and taps your shoulder. “Look, I’m already down a peg with regards to my powers! What’s a bit of exhaustion on top of this?”

“Let Jack go.” The group shifts to reveal Toothiana. “I doubt he’ll absorb as much as I did. He’s not that stupid. Plus, we’ll never hear the end of it if we don’t let Jack take care of his home, right? It’s like preventing Bunny from defending the Warren.”

The rest of the Guardians, including Manny, shift uncomfortably.

“In and out,” Jack pleads. We’ll be gone thirty minutes. Tops.”

The rest of the group goes silent. You and they don’t see a way to dissuade Jack, nor does anyone besides Koz have any objections to you putting yourself in this kind of danger. In and out; just for teleportation scanning. Maybe one sample. Two samples. Three—

You’re getting better at thrusting dangerous thoughts like that out of your mind, though the temptation for at least one sample remains. And a minute later, when none one the Guardians or Ombric or Koz or Seraphina have any worthwhile objections, you motion for Selene and Jack, and hold your hand out to North. He sighs and digs around in his pockets until he unearths a globe.

_“Very well, then. Prepare for pain, young ice sprite.”_

Selene swirls around you two, going faster and faster until you can’t see past her. The familiar sensation of a Source start to seep in, and you control your inhales and exhales to stave off at least some of the exhaustion. Next to you, Jack grunts. He clenches his fist through your cloak, yanking a bit too hard and making you cough. But, knowing how harsh a competing Source can be, you let it go with only a slight shift to make the yank far less drastic. What seems like an instant eternity later, Selene stops swirling so much, and a new cave come into focus.

The walls look like they’re made of glimmering opals, with extra veins of texture running through them like wood grain. And then you look closer. It _is_ wood grain. Petrified wood giving off a soft glow. Unlike the Source of Summer, it’s more like a cool breeze, one hovering between “just right compared to the hot sticky days of a southern summer” and “technically chilly.” It’s invigorating, comforting, energizing. Meanwhile, Jack falls to his knees and takes a few careful breaths in and out.

 _“Oh dear. I do not think he quite anticipated that.”_ Selene hovers one point of her abstract form near him, butting his head with it once or twice. _“He perhaps requires help.”_

You summon the last remaining sample of Summer that you still have, wondering if this will balance him out or just make things worse. You’d love to find out, but maybe under better circumstances…

A shrill chitter echoes down the cavern, making you shiver where you stand. You kneel down next to Jack, willing to take this one risk in light of the urgency. You pop open the container, let a bit of Summer out under his nose, and shove it away.

“Try this, Jack,” you say. “I think it might help.”

“‘Might?’” he asks, tone too pained to affect real worry. And with that single breath, he manages to inhale the majority of it all. He coughs. He shakes his head. And then he slowly stands, flexing his fingers.

“Uhh?” His voice reverberates a bit, and the tips of his fingers shine a faint iridescent orange.

“You okay?”

“I think? I might be?” He blinks for a second and takes a mostly wobble-free step. “For now, anyway?”

“Good enough.”

Jack drags out his phone and clicks open the GPS. The cursor leaps back and forth across a map of the country before declaring an error. Worth a shot, but you had a feeling that wouldn’t be so easy. You hold on to his sleeve and start leading him farther down the cavern, aware that at any moment the shadows could realize there are intruders. And hoping that once you reach the Source itself, it’ll be as quick as you sold it to the others back in Santoff Claussen.


	108. Watcher In The Woods

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no update wednesday 3/3, next update friday 3/5

With no time to look at the uncanny natural architecture, you and Jack quickly step down the cavern towards the Source of Fall. The farther you get, the more the anticipation grows, the more the temperature fluctuates between too cold (but not freezing) and bland warmth (but not sweltering). More and more brightly colored leaves decorate the spongy floor, fallen from gnarled, unidentifiable deciduous trees peeking out from a few cracks in the rocks. Their roots either curl into high-stepping knees plunging in and out of the dirt, or they disappear into the rock beyond where you can see. Finally, the tunnel opens into a wider room.

A forest of tall, silver-barked trees greets you. You and Jack look up, but despite evidence of golden leaves falling all around you, the tree canopies are hidden behind distance and an ominous fog.

“I think I read about something like this once,” Jack says. He floats a foot off the ground, hovering over to the nearest tree. You lean back into Selene, and she wraps around your shoulders like a scarf. Jack places his hand against trunk and closes his eyes. A small blot of red pulses from his palm, and he then tugs it away. He shakes his hand out, then does it again, letting the touch linger.

“I think…” He finally backs away from the tree, clutching his staff and looking around. “I think this is all the same tree. It’s just growing different trunks from all the same roots.”

Weird, but thankfully irrelevant. You scoot over and grab Jack’s arm again, and the two of you make your way through the forest of clones. Eventually, Selene perks up, and she darts off your neck without a word. You and Jack tug each other along until you find her making a wide circle over another perfectly round hole in the ground, yellow leaves stopping abruptly a yard away from the Source’s maw in yet another perfect circle. Likewise, the treeline stops ten yards before the leaves do. One quick glance behind you determines that, if the shadows have even noticed, they’re far behind.

“Wait here and back me up,” you whisper. Jack leans against a tree and holds up his staff. You dig the globe out and activate it.

A minute passes, and everything seems to be going well. Too well, perhaps. Boringly well.

Another five minutes go by, and you wish this stupid thing would finish so you can get out of the weird forest and go back to safety. You pace back around the edge of the treeline, and your eyes catch on the entrance to the Source.

_One small sample can’t hurt, can it?_

You lower the globe a bit, grabbing an empty container from your quiver. You edge past the treeline, past the leaf-line, and sit next to the hole itself. Peeking inside, you feel the emotions wash over you.

Anticipation. Eagerness.

It shifts.

Disorder. Imbalance.

You hold the container out and watch carefully as it fills. The golden-green energy flickers like softly falling sparkler glitter, falling upward to the current top of the jar. This could be it. This could be the final step in gathering everything you need to fully understand how magic on this planet functions. Not even Ombric made it this far. An odd pride spreads from your heart outward as the container tops off.

_That didn’t take so long._

You shove away the full container and summon the next, listening to Selene hum in your ear as this one flickers and sparks. At the edge of your hearing, you think you hear your name. You glance around towards Jack, but before you can properly look for him, you relax, deciding it was just your anxiety getting the better of you again. Maybe a minute passes, and you’re starting your third container when the call comes again, this time accompanied by a more panicked tone and a replying whisper from Selene.

 _“Perhaps it is time for you to go.”_ She swirls around you, creating a vacuum that drags you out of range of the Source’s radiation. Once back within the bound of the leaves, you blink rapidly and snap out of the excited trance.

This time, you distinctly hear Jack call for you. Following that, the distinct sound of his staff blasting ice somewhere behind you.

“Are you done yet!” He stumbles backwards with a high-pitched whisper. A thick fog wafts through the trees just beyond him

He looks over to you, to the sample in your hand, and—at the same time you realize, too—at your other empty hand. The both of you turn to the edge of the Source, where the globe sits precariously at the edge.

“Uh oh,” you say.

“I do _not_ want to hear ‘Uh oh’ from you right now! You had _one job!”_

Jack’s rant cuts off as a familiar, and yet distinctly different, chittering gets louder and louder around the area. He almost trips over himself, scooping you up and trying his hardest to make liftoff. But between carrying you, the first trip in, and presumably the exhaustion from Summer leaving his system, your toes drag along the ground, and you two only make it to the edge of the Source slightly faster. Right as you get there, he spasms, loses his grip and drops you. You roll over the ground, stopping yourself right at the edge of the hole. The Fall radiation blasts out, making the ear facing it ring from exposure. But as you drag yourself away, your knee hits something that feels like a fist-sized stone. As you sit up, you watch the un-set snowglobe start to tumble down the hole.

You watch it fall for what seems like ten full minutes before your panic kicks in. Darting your hand out, you barely close your fingers around the globe, clenching them even tighter as it slips a bit in the grip. Meanwhile, your forearm starts to tingle where it crosses into the hole. The tingle escalates to a harsh pins and needles numbness as you carefully drag it back upward, and another similar burn spreads from your head down the longer you face down into the odd radiation. Jack yanks you away from the hole and holds you up with Selene’s help.

As soon as she settles over you, she grunts and spits, _“Get out of them!”_ She closes in on you and you briefly register some of her power flowing into you. This time, instead of burning harshly, it’s like a slight sear—one only a bit more comfortable and familiar—catches up to whatever Fall has going on in your system. Your legs start shaking, and you lean harder into Jack.

A gross, hitching giggle emanates in a wave that echoes from one end of the cavern to the other. Something halfway between a non-committal wind and an overzealous breeze swirls around you both, making you shiver and close the gap between you. Brushing against Jack’s shoulder is as comforting as it’s gonna get for now.

You can’t see anything through the fog. No reaching claws, no gnashing teeth, no half-seen skittering shadows at the edges of your vision. You may as well be watching a blank white wall. And as the sounds ripple through your heart again, inspiring the very terror they were created for, it becomes apparent they don’t need to trick your sight. Not when the theater of the mind is willing to do most of the work. You glance at the globe in your hand. It finally finishes registering the location for the future; a part of you would prefer to ruin that now by simply using the globe instead of bringing the location back to put into the larger pool of transportable areas.

“Hey, Selene?” you whisper. She wraps around you. “Any chance you can teleport us out of here?”

_“Where would you like to go? To Winter? Summer?”_

“Get us back to Santoff Claussen,” Jack says. “Now! I’ll sleep for a week if I need to, get us out of here—”

_“I cannot physically lift even one of you in this state. It is only the half moon. And the outside of this cavern is light.”_

Jack closes his eyes, saying, “Time zones…”

The laughter at the edges diverges into a mix of discordant whispers and scratching growls. Into indistinct animal calls you swear you can identify, but veer much too _off_ to get a handle on. Into whole voices compressed by distant familiarity—and also compressed like an MP3 export gone wrong. Tinny. Hollow. Dirty with distortion for as much as you swear you can hear actual words.

Something slithers across the leaves on the ground.

“Spring.” You grab onto Jack’s hoodie sleeve, trying and failing to regulate your breathing. “The Warren. Bunny will know someone’s gotten in, or at least his stone eggs will.”

Jack grimaces, but he reaches out to Selene. “All right, let’s go.”

_“This will use up more of my power. Which means you will experience more pain.”_

“I said let’s go!” Jack rises to a shout on the last work, slamming his hand over his mouth as soon as he realizes.

But as his echo fades, the sounds are gone, and as you keep listening, trying to hear _something_ because the ambient sounds have also disappeared, the more he shakes and pats at Selene.

“Let’s go,” he repeats. “Go, go go!”

Selene curls around your ankles, swirling around the both of you. She starts slow, and gets faster and faster the higher she rises. You can barely hear anything over the rushing noises her movements make. Barely.

You dart your eyes over to Jack right as Selene starts the actual process of teleportation. His eyes are wide, and he’s paler than you ever thought he could be. You swear you can see the blood vessels under his skin with how white and gaunt he looks. Another, croaking laugh picks up around you, and right before your sightline of Fall vanishes, several mismatched eyes open in the misty spaces between the trees, cuts of jagged teeth smiling around them.

 _I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-I-N-G._ The voice rumbles. _W-E. W-I-L-L. M-E-E-T. S-O-O-N._

Almost no time later, Selene unwraps her form from around you, depositing you and Jack into the dense, verdant forest of the Source of Spring. As soon as she lifts away, you both collapse. You lie down in the warm grass and laugh the terror out of your body. Jack simply passes out. After enough minutes pass that you can feel abs starting to form with how hard you’ve been laughing, you catch your breath and crawl over to Jack. His pulse bumps along just under his skin, and you sigh in relief, despite knowing it’s probably not that easy to kill a spirit, even if you have a god and magic on your side.

But then you look around and realize that, without Bunny’s help, you don’t know where the exit is.

“Can you carry him?” you ask Selene.

She’s gotten even smaller than when she arrived. So small that you could probably fit her in the rest of your empty containers combined. She shakes one end of her abstract form, and you nod along, realizing how stupid a question that was. You take another moment and shake Jack.

“Mmng…”

He doesn’t open his eyes, but he does grab your hand and squeezes it. A good sign, all things considered. You try to remember how a fireman carry works, but opt instead to just yank him up by his arm and try to hook him over your shoulder as much as you can. He gets his legs under him and leans heavily onto you, and you start shuffle-stumbling over to the wall to look for the exit.

It takes maybe an hour of holding your hand to the wall and occasionally resting until you burst through the exit. Huge puffs of pollen from the flowers you disturb on your way out make you cough and sneeze, but at least by the time you’re done, you’re already dragging yourself and Jack down the tunnel out.

"Eggs… eggs… come oooonnn, eggs!"

Your head sits on a swivel, moving back and forth as you search for any sign of the stone eggs that’ll get the word back to the others in time for someone to get y’all back to complete safety. Well… safety and quiet. The further you get into the Warren, the more you can see egg production ramping up. Finally, you make it to a small hub area, where a dozen stone eggs mill about, and maybe a hundred or five actual eggs waddle in unwatched lines.

“Hey!” You call out. A few of the stone egg guardians jump up from where they’ve been laying down and napping or something. They trot over to you, turning half their bodies so all you can see is their intimidating faces. “Get Bunny? Please?”

Two wander off, slipping down a hole, while the others surround you and Jack. You sit down, letting Jack’s slight weight fall to your side so you can rest. The stone eggs make soft grinding noises until Bunny shows up, bounding off the curves of the tunnels. He skids to a stop a few yards away from you, holding out his boomerang and watching carefully. You just wave and babble something, anything that you think will get him to take you back to Big Root for proper rest.

Bunny sighs, hauls Jack up, and motions for a few of the stone eggs to carry you. They keep up with him and provide a smooth enough ride that you drift off a bit as they go, and it’s not until your stomach jumps up to meet your teeth that you realize Bunny’s dropping you through a tunnel. A second later, gravity halts and then reverses, leaving you sprawled out on the floor of Big Root once again.

Before you can say anything, or anyone can ask you anything, Koz bowls you over again, wrapping you in his arms around you and pressing kisses into your face. The area above you darkens a bit as Selene scoots closer. After a dizzying second, you manage to get enough air to concentrate on everyone around you.

There’s a clacking noise, and to your right, you see Jack, finally all the way conscious, hunched over in a chair. He hugs his arms around himself, and his teeth chatter incessantly.

“Jack’s cold,” Koz mutters. “Why is he _cold?”_

“What happened?” Katherine says.

You flub your words over and over, trying to find the right way to say that you messed up. But for all your efforts—including telling yourself that one fuck up like this isn’t the end of the world—the familiar anxiety rushes back, and your mind instead starts trying to find a way to twist the story to avoid bigger consequences.

“I, uh…”

“We g-got overwh-whelmed. Took longer t-to set the globe than we thought.” Jack, still shaking and speaking through a tense jaw, nods to them and Selene. “They managed to sn-snag a few samples of the Source after-after activating the telep-porter. But the shadows caught wi-win—they found us.

“Selene managed to get us out of there after that.” You pick up the story from there, watching Jack as he leaves out your conscious neglect of the situation. He looks at you intently, glancing around for a second before nodding for your to continue. “She can only move between the Sources, I guess. Which track with my own experience. I told her to take us to Spring so that we could find an out. Thanks.” You nod to Bunny.

“So that’s it?” He replies. “One teleportation point and the enemy knows we’re up to somethin’? You put yourselves in danger for _that?”_

“I _said_ they got some samples!” Jack floats a foot off the chair before another shudder rocks through him and he plunges down again. “I dunno what they’re gonna do with it, but it’s not nothing!”

“We also…” The tenser and tenser attention swivels back to you again. “We also heard the thing laugh right as Selene was transporting us.”

“The eldritch beast?” Koz looks into the distance in horror. “It was there?”

“Yes, but no? I think?” You shake your head. “It definitely felt like it was there, but only watching us.”

Everyone settles back a bit. Neither they nor you have any better ideas on how the shadows are trying to work their ways around you all. Your mind is more occupied with the nearly-lost snow globe, going into overdrive as you think about how you might have almost fucked up the Earth’s seasons for a thousand years. For as powerful and overwhelming as the Sources are, they’re still kind of delicate. But, if Selene could be a fearling and somehow fuse with a Source without the moon exploding or the tides rising, then maybe it takes a certain amount or kind of force ( _Malevolent intent?_ you think) to really break something fundamental a the core of it all. After minutes of further silence, the Guardians take another recess.

A few hours later, you make your way up to a small balcony in Big Root’s thick branches. The day’s been a disappointing mess, and you feel compelled to reset your mind by watching the sunrise. Frigid air whistles over you as you step out, pinpoints of pain rising to the tips of your ears and nose.

“Oh. Sorry.” Jack floats down from the top of the door frame where he’d perched himself. He alights onto the railing, leaning on his staff and watching the area. Much like he had a year ago at your home during the attempted negotiation-turned-ambush. “I was just trying to see where that Source nonsense has left me. Tired, fidgety, and weirdly cold—haven’t been that in a _looong_ while. But alive and well.”

“You covered for me.” You cut right to the chase, and Jack laughs. "You diverted the conversation away from my dumbassery."

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I expected a ‘thank you,’ actually.”

“Well, thanks. But really, why?”

“I’m not ecstatic about your priorities back there, but it was an honest mistake. You just want to be left alone to do your experiments. You didn’t seek out this life, and it’s not like you’ve been chosen as part of the Guardians.” He stretches himself all the way out. “Even if you had been, the choice is ultimately up to you, and I get the feeling that—as of right now—you have no interest in being a superhero.”

“Correct…” You disagree with him about the “honest mistake” part, but he continues.

“We’re all under a lot of stress as it is. I didn’t want to sidetrack everyone into questioning your commitment rather than staying on task to free Burgess ASAP.”

You smile. “That’s quite a selfish reason. Didn’t think that jived with being a Guardian.”

“I’m not a malevolent spirit, but I _can_ lie and deceive” He grins widely taps his temple with one of his fingers. “Ever hear of the trickster archetype?”

“Yeah. It fits.”

The both of you sit comfortably as the stars fade and the sky runs a gradient of gray, green, and orange. Katherine wanders up as a bit of gold breaks through, joining the vigil until the neighborhood is awash in cool blue and the first villagers greet the day; and Kozmotis rounds it all out as he teleports back through the tether you share, just in time for the first rays of the sun to warm your cheeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway theres a real clonal aspen forest out there named [pando](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_\(tree\)) and i fear plants


End file.
